I wrote my first book, a mystery about a lost dog, when I was five, typing one keystroke at a time on my dad’s old Remington. The story didn’t gain much of a following, but it hooked me on writing forever.

In my professional life I’ve worn many hats—classroom writing teacher, writing and editing instructor for adult professionals, telecourse developer, editor, journalist—and my love for writing has been at the center of it all. I’ve written or co-authored forty-some books, most of them on writing or the teaching of writing, and am best known for Creating Writers and The 9 Rights of Every Writer. For more than thirty years, I’ve been lucky enough to work with the best people on the planet, teachers, creating workshops to help them do something invaluable: guide young people as they evolve into skilled, passionate writers.

No Ordinary Cat is my first published work of fiction, and I was thrilled when it received a starred review from Kirkus. The book was inspired when a mysterious cat we'd never seen visited our home one winter day. I knew he had a story. He just needed a little help telling it. His imagined tale eventually grew into a book about courage, friendship, and the healing bonds that develop between humans and the animals they love.

I am now excited to be working on a sequel, Heroes in Hiding, which I hope to publish in the summer of 2021. If I'm fortunate, this will be only the second of many fictional works to come.

Currently, I'm blessed to live amid towering Ponderosas in Central Oregon--a place many writers and artists call home.

“This feline-centric yet deeply human and adult-friendly novel for children is the first work of fiction by Spandel, a prolific author best known for instructional books on writing for classrooms and workshops. May it not be her last. The author’s well-drawn characters are shaped by empathy, not sentiment, and by her near-poetic observations of the minutiae in their lives (Mrs. Lin’s garden and kitchen; Mr. Peabody’s books and herbal teas) and of the natural world around them.”
– Kirkus Reviews