Marian Betts

Growing up in post WWII Sudan, Africa as children of British Missionaries with few toys of our own, we learned from the native children how to model people and animals from clay and to make up stories based on the tales we’d heart from the adults.
Because we had no radio and very few books, our evening entertainment was listening to Dad’s adventures in a land still wild and unpredictable. He also made up stories about the people and animals, of battles, losses, and triumphs – stories that would make our hair stand on end, tuck our feet under us or hide under the covers.
When we moved to Khartoum and found a library, I became an avid reader, and still am.
We immigrated to the United States in 1963. High School and College English classes honed my storytelling ability.
But life sometimes sidetracks a person and it wasn’t until the early 1990s that I actually began to write. First research papers, class curriculum and instructional booklets. Short stories and poetry came next, then a musical, then the publishing of the first and second novels of a Historical Christion Fiction series based on a Ruby strangely shaped like a human heart. I had finished the research and was beginning to formulate the third book when my readers begged me to have the first book made into a film. I went back to my studies to learn about screenwriting and now have the scripts for four movies based on the first book.