Linda Gale Vettel grew up a typical North Dakota farm girl, loving the outdoors—especially all adventures on horseback on every day that weather would permit, and some that didn't. She spent all of her moments, whether riding after cattle, milking dairy cows, mowing hay or as a barefoot cowgirl, with exploration over the next hill on her mind.

The backs of Trigger, Patches, Gold Dollar, Straight Arrow and Cool were the backs of adventure. Young Linda Shipley dragged her guitar along in the days of folk music and old cowboy tales and ditties. Her dad teased her about spending more time making up songs, dreaming up stories for her some-day book and fitting in with Indians with her dark skin. He never discouraged her attempts to try anything. Thus, she became fearless about most anything.

The old Allen Township country schoolhouse holds countless memories, as do her years at the Steele-Dawson Schools, where she graduated in 1966. Later she attended North Dakota State University in Fargo and Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma.

On August 2, 1969 Linda married Wes Vettel from Bismarck, who served as a USAF pilot in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam conflict. Having lived in various parts of the USA, they have spent the last twenty-plus years in Beulah, North Dakota. She is a mom and a grand mom who has been active in Aglow International for twenty-five years.

Besides fiction writing, Linda wrote the script for the Beulah 1989 Jubilee Musical Production & Play. During the 1980's she coordinated and helped direct Beulah Summer Children's Theater and other drama-play-musicals.

Linda Vettel is a member of the Midwest Booksellers Association, Pride of Dakota and ND Center for the Book. Two of her most recent articles, Winter Wind and Around the Clock were published by Lake Region Writers' Group in Winter: A Season of Writing on the Prairie.