Cynthia Lord

Cynthia Lord is an American children's author. Her debut novel "Rules" was published by Scholastic, Inc. in 2006, and was a 2007 Newbery Honor book and winner of the Schneider Family Book Award.
Early life.
Lord was born in Massachusetts and grew up in New Hampshire.
In college, Lord had some short stories published, and won a contest with one.
After college, Lord got married and became a teacher. As her children grew up, she returned to writing fiction. She gets up most mornings between 3:30 and 4:00 A. M. Lord says that: That’s my just-me time to open my heart and spill it across a book.
Career.
Lord says that she still loves watching words jump onto the page, and she still loves making people laugh and cry and shiver with her writing. She still loves to read a great story. Lord still has kept "Happy" and "Peppermint" and "Fantastic Mr. Fox" and "Winnie the Pooh" all of these years. She keeps them to remind her of the child she used to be, the one who liked surfboarding toads, sang the cherry song, and scared herself silly writing her first ghost story. She’s the one she writes for.
Lord lives in an old house with her husband, John, and her children, Julia and Gregory. Gregory has autism. David in the book she wrote, "Rules", was inspired by Gregory, Ms. Lord's son. Lord says that some of her best work comes from the days that she does not feel especially inspired. She lives in Brunswick, Maine.