Did you know...? (or Ruth Amanda in the Wild)

The author attempting to evade the papparazzi.

Well, this is something that I have thought about doing and then put off, because I don't think I'm that unusual. I'm an open book. Literally. I see it--I write it! However, here are a few tidbits about me that you may not know:

• I am the second of four children, and the family used to joke that I was the milk-man's kid because I didn't resemble any of my siblings as a child. (I still don't think I do but people insist on pointing it out now...)
• My family moved around a lot, so I always felt that home was wherever my stuff was. Now it is wherever my husband is. 
• My uncle built me a tree house one summer and I insisted on sleeping out there every night until it got too cold. (This was Canada after all.)
• My favourite mantra when cooking is "You can never have too much cheese!"
• My favourite mantra when creating is "What the heck...why not?"
• My favourite food is Macaroni and Cheese. My second favourite food is anything chocolate with cream cheese icing...
• My favourite colour is green, and particularly that golden emerald colour you get when the sun is on it's way down and everything in the forest glows.
• I really like snails, geckos, funny looking bugs, and birds. I really dislike spiders. They should be banned.
• My husband made me sign a "Spider Accord" in 2018 where I vowed to never smoosh another spider. His part of the Accord involves keeping Spider Relocation Kits in every room of the house and making sure he Relocates the spiders to their natural habitat as quickly as humanly possible after I trap them in the Spider Relocation Kit!
• I was horse crazy when I was younger and only read books with horses in them for about 4 years. Thankfully that covered a lot of historical fiction as people used to travel by horse and carriage a lot in the old days.
• The TO READ pile beside my bed also includes the pile on my husband's side of the bed, a table in the living room, and a very specific book shelf. My husband thinks the pile on his side is HIS TO READ pile but really it's just my overflow. I often relocate books from one place to the other and he often forgets where they started...
• I have a secret hoard of children's books and because it is a hoard, I can say I am a Book Dragon. I share with small people. Sometimes. After they wash their sticky fingers...
• I wanted to be Santa Claus when I grew up, until someone burst my bubble and said I could only be Mrs. Claus. She is important because she bakes cookies, washes Santa's long underwear and secretly runs the show...I am lobbying to make Santa Claus a unisex position. Mr. Claus can do the laundry, thank you very much!
• I also wanted at one point to be a skydiving veterinarian who created architectural designs for treehouses you could live in year round. I ended up in bookkeeping for way too long...as in accounting, numbers...
• Now that I am still not grown up, I know that what I want to be--and in fact AM--is an award winning author and illustrator!

Well...that's 15 things you know about me now that you probably wished you didn't. Thank you for reading and taking the time to get to know me.

These actually answer some questions that I've been asked via Instagram, Tiktok, or Facebook (you can find me on each of these @ruthamandawrites). Follow me for more ridiculousness--I mean, very important authoring and creative stuff and book updates!

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