PJ Lassek is an adventurer at heart who is always up for the challenge, whether it's cycling across Ireland or spelunking with friends in unguided caves in Arkansas. Her quest in life is to experience as much as possible and still live to tell about it. She characterizes almost every unpredictable event that comes her way whether good or bad as only added color to what otherwise would be a boring black and white canvas of life.She makes her living as a journalist for the Tulsa World newspaper. Although she currently reports on the serious side of news events within the arena of local politics, outside of her news writing she rarely takes on a serious demeanor, always searching for that smile or hearty laugh. So when approached to do this assignment, she definitely was intrigued. While she has freelanced for a few state, national, and international magazines during her more than twenty-year reporting career, this is her first attempt at writing anything longer than a thirty-inch story, let alone a book. PJ also is a cartoonist, which she says is more of a hobby than a business even though she has sold her work.A native of Detroit, she was raised mostly in Oklahoma. She lived about five years in Los Angeles as a young adult before returning to Tulsa, where she lives with her rescue dog, Stella Kowalski, a border collie mix.