Watermark Books & Cafe is excited to welcome author Lois Ruby in store for her new book, Living Fire: Zeb Finley and the Hornswoggled Thief! Before Zeb nearly loses himself on the vast Kansas prairie, he must find his heroic self in the story he’s secretly writing about Montague Mortis, and the Hornswoggled Horse Thief. As an only-child growing up in San Francisco, Lois always had her nose deep in a book, even while crossing the city streets to and from a gorgeous Carnegie library. Her B.A. is in English literature from the University of California/Berkeley, where she met her husband, Dr. Tom Ruby, while they were still teenagers. Her M.A. is in library science, and she was an art and music librarian at the University of Missouri and a YA librarian for the Dallas Public Library. When she started having babies at an alarming rate, Lois was fortunate to be able to stay home
and do sweet battle with them as infants and toddlers, while writing an hour a day during Sesame Street. Those boys survived her mothering and turned out pretty well. So, now she’s a full-time writer, dividing her hours among traveling with her husband, researching, writing, teaching, and visiting schools to talk about books and the joy
of reading. Lois has had 22 books published, including one biography, two short story collections, and 19 novels. Though she now lives in Ohio, she and Tom raised their children in Kansas and can’t seem to leave the state behind. Her newest book, Living Fire: Jeb Finley and the Hornswoggled Thief, will officially launch in Kansas this November. When kids ask Lois if she’s ever going to retire, she shouts NO! In fact, she says, when she’s dead and buried, her arm will shoot out of the grave with a pen in her cold, cold hand, and she’ll keep writing in the air forever.