Krista Tibbs     Born: July 14     PA Author of The Neurology of Angels: A novel about the hearts inside the business and politics of drug development. (See Home page for a synopsis and reviews. A video preview is available on the Resources page.) I grew up in Lincoln, Maine and have fond memories of sitting in the hallway at Mattanawcook Junior High writing stories with my friends. As fun as that was, my favorite subject was always math, so when I graduated from high school, it made sense to go to MIT—because I have a penchant for doing everything the hard way! I loved MIT and kept my sweat- and tear-stained chemistry notebooks as souvenirs. I majored in neuroscience (officially, Brain and Cognitive Sciences), and my first job after college was in a hearing research lab at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. I made a lot of journal entries during that stint at the lab bench, because I believe animals are vital to medical research, but I struggled with the logistics. I decided to leave and spent the next summer playing piano for the theater group at Camp Vega for Girls. I was fortunate to be in Maine then, because a position became available on an epidemiological study of the health and service needs of kids in rural areas. I lived in a trailer park in Machias during that job, and I had no television, so I spent a lot of time writing—but for my eyes only. When that project ended, I went back to Massachusetts to be a research assistant on a memory study at Harvard University, until I realized that academic research just wasn’t my path. I had it in my head to write a book. Of course, at that point in my life, I didn't have much to say, which occurred to me about the same time as my rent and school loan payments were due! So I juggled 4 jobs and 16-hour days delivering newspapers, temping, tutoring, and scheduling volunteers for MRI studies. I have to give my parents a lot of credit for holding their tongues during that height of my “finding myself” phase. Things worked themselves out, as they so often do. One of my temp jobs was at a biotechnology company in the clinical research department, and I learned of a whole world outside academia where important medical work is also being done. Convenient for me, the company was starting a clinical study in a neurological disease and needed an assistant, so I ended up working there full-time. Outside my day job, I did community theater with the Mystic Players, took up ballroom dancing, and tutored for Summit Educational Group, putting my story-telling on a back burner. I really liked clinical research and saw myself with a potential career in the biotech industry, but I needed to understand more about the business side. So, I left Boston for North Carolina and an MBA at Duke University. From there, I stopped a while in Washington, DC at the Executive Office of the President. I made time to go swing dancing at least once or twice a week. I also finally got back to writing in earnest, though still only practice stories- nothing I wanted anyone to see. When I left the government and returned to biotech, I decided if I were ever going to write a book, I needed just to get started. So I challenged myself to finish a draft, even if nobody ever read it. I was about 70 pages along on a couple of different ideas when one afternoon, I was scribbling stream-of-consciousness, and all of the bits and pieces that had been swirling in my head for years spilled onto the paper and formed a master plan for The Neurology of Angels. I have since spent every spare moment working on it. (Okay, except for the three months when I was disgusted with it and had to put it away. I read that Stephen King has to write fast, because he gets sick of his own stories, and now I understand exactly what he meant. I intend to be much more efficient with the next one.) Well, as my grandmother used to say, that's all the news that's fit to print.