Michele D Hampton

Ten days after my mom’s due date, her doctor induced labor. It turns out that I wasn’t completely ready, and my heart had not fully developed. My heart murmur was so strong that it could be heard by holding your head to my chest. In the early 1970’s heart surgery was still avoided in young children. But by the time I was five, the doctors at Riley Children’s Hospital realized there was no choice but to operate. Thankfully, the operation was a huge success and I have been fine ever since.

Due to my heart defect preventing me from being active the first five years of my life, I began to rely on make believe. My mother and father read to me each night. I wrote my first stories in elementary school where my teachers recognized my talents. The same teachers encouraged me to attend 6 different Young Author’s Conferences.

Throughout High School and College, I continued to take every writing course available to me. I also discovered a talent for singing and in college, majored in vocal performance where I sang with a professional opera company. I continued to write and graduated with a minor in creative writing.

After college, life got in the way, but I continued to remember telling stories and enjoying them in my head, until there was a plague. And I decided to offset my lockdown boredom by putting the stories into actual writing. One day, I looked into my jewelry box and found an angel figurine and decided that these stories need to go out into the world. If you don’t already know the story of the angel figurine, please see the link.

When I am not writing I am enjoying time with my husband, watching too much television, and playing with my five shelties or my five cats. Yes, I am the crazy animal lover who owns too many, but they all get the love they deserve and are completely spoiled, as animals should be. I can talk for hours about them, so it’s probably best to not get me started.

I have based Sycamore Falls on several different places in the Midwest where I have visited and loved, which include Nashville, Indiana, Goshen, Indiana, and a bit of my college town Adrian, Michigan. I want Sycamore Falls to be the hometown that we might not have grown up in, but that we can feel safe coming home to.