Growing up in the isolation afforded from living in the shadow of Oak Creek Canyon in Arizona during the later forties and fifties, the fourth of seven children, Jean Henderson, who currently writes under her first name, Melva, found ample time in which to develop her creative side.  Her creativity manifested itself at an early age in the form of drawings and stories made up on the spur of the moment for younger siblings as well as local children she often babysat.  Her imagination was fertile during a time when girls played with hand drawn paper dolls, or those cut from the McCall’s magazines.  Having developed a love for the written word as a youngster, she carried that love into adulthood.  When she enrolled in a creative writing class, her only formal training in writing, in order to quell the symptoms of boredom introduced by an empty nest, she activated the love she’d kept bridled throughout her life.  Like Grandma Moses with her late blooming career in art, Jean has decided it’s time to dust off her creative processes and bring her lifelong ambition as an author to fruition by publishing her stories and novels.