Sonya Sones is an extremely creative author, who writes inspiring novels. What My Girlfriend Doesn’t Know is just the sequel to her most famous book, What My Mother Doesn’t Know. It is truly an honor to write about her.

Sonya Sones was born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in Newton, Massachusetts. Growing up in the suburbs, Sonya felt so different from everyone else, so she'd climb up to her attic and draw for hours. Dinosaurs filled the pages of loose-leaf paper and sketch books. Being an artist was all that she dreamed of as a child. Although, as she grew older, that dream was replaced by an animation addiction. At the age of seventeen, Sonya knew that photography and animation were her destiny. So she worked hard to earn a degree, a B.A. in film making and photography at New Hampshire College.

Shortly after graduating college, Sonya was hired to teach animation to kids all around the country. She also taught a film class at Harvard University, and reported that it was “astonishing” to be teaching students only a few years younger or older than her. She felt embarrassed, knowing that she couldn’t have been accepted to Harvard even if she had applied!

A few jobs later, Sonya moved to Hollywood, California, where she became a personal assistant to a famous movie director, but was fired a month later because she lacked the skill of delivering coffee. But before she even had time to tell people that she was unemployed, she was hired to work on animation for a Woody Allen movie. At the same time, she was a photographer and script supervisor for Ron Howard’s first film. Eventually, she achieved a full time job as a film-editor. Sonya says her three favorite edits were cutting the trailer for “Urban Cowboys”, cutting an episode of “L.A. Law”, and co-editing the movie “River’s Edge”.

After years of jobs and movies, Sonya finally settled, and fell in love with Bennett Tramer, who was the head writer of “Saved by the Bell”. The couple got married and had their first child, a baby girl called Ava. This event encouraged Sonya to quit editing to spend more time with Ava. Having a child also inspired her to satisfy her creative urges and decorate baby clothes as a job. Her merchandise sold to stores like Macy’s, Nordstrom, and Neiman Marcus. And in the process of placing adorable dinosaurs onto miniature dresses and bibs, Sonya gave birth to her second child, a baby boy called Jeremy.

When Sonya’s children were toddlers, she began to read books to them constantly. It enthused her to write books of her own, and her first creation was a poem book called “Smitty the Hollywood Kitty”. She thoroughly enjoyed the illustrations, but disliked the words. So, to fix it, Sonya enrolled in a poetry class at UCLA and was taught by Myra Cohn Livingston. At first, she started out writing cute, funny poems for children, but Myra encouraged her to write about her past. So Sonya wrote her first novel, Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy. After all of the positive feedback, she decided to write another book, and another, and another! She tells in an interview, that at first, writing a novel with only poetry can be intimidating. However after writing for a while, everything just falls into place.

Today, Sonya Sones has won the Christopher Award, Myra Cohn Livingston Poetry Award, Claudia Lewis Poetry Award, and several other state awards. She enjoys riding her bicycle, dancing, reading, photography, and “hunting for buried treasure in vintage clothing stores”. She currently lives in Southern California with her family and occasional daughter. I really enjoy Sonya Sones’ books because she always gives two climaxes and a questionable ending. The way that she formats each poem into a story is remarkable and someday, I hope there will be several other authors liker her…who knows, maybe me!