About the authors
Betsy Cluff — teacher, mother, storyteller — with Brenda Holm, the woman whose childhood became The Crick Code. In the pages of the novel she goes by Becca.
Betsy
Creativity courses through my veins, unsatisfied to be stilled — it causes me to be restless until an idea becomes reality. Even as a young child I would search through the trash to find materials to create something. Soap boxes became people, and cardboard tubes became goggles or decorated megaphones. Even the little piece of metal and key used to open a can of Spam became something…until it cut my finger, giving me a scar to this day. Ah, those were the days.
My love of discovery and creation led me to get a Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from Northern Arizona University with an emphasis in art and writing.
In between degrees and creating projects, I created my two oldest children, then became a full-time teacher for the Gilbert school district. I was that teacher who arrived an hour early and stayed two hours late. Just teaching Art wasn’t enough — I supervised yearbook, newspaper, and the AVID program. My colleagues would make comments like I don’t know how you do so much and You’re crazy! Smiling, I would nod and shrug my shoulders, but inside I knew my balancing act could tumble at any moment. I was missing out on my life that was right in front of me because I was moving so fast. Something had to change.
Change found me when the power of creativity once again proved its pull on my life. At the age of thirty-eight, with an almost sixteen-year-old daughter and a ten-year-old son, I found out I was pregnant. Birth control and old age couldn’t hold this creation back. Although at the time it felt like I was losing control of my life, I can now see it was actually what gave me my life back.
Determined to live healthier, my husband and I decided I had to let go of my teaching position to stay home with our new baby. Relatives and friends thought we were crazy to let go of my salary, but I had been called crazy before, so we just did it.
Brenda
That’s when I met Brenda — the friend whose story became this novel. In the book she goes by Becca, but out here she is Brenda Holm, and we quickly became close friends — a bond of friendship, purpose, and resolve. Plus we both love to create.
Brenda is an amazing stay-at-home mom to four beautiful children. Before her two youngest children were born, she worked in the school system as an attendance clerk, where she quickly made some amazing friends. Those friends encouraged her often to write her unique story. That’s when Brenda and I started getting serious about making this story come to life. After the birth of her third child, Brenda decided to stay home and work part time doing finances for the granite business she and her husband own.
Once we were both stay-at-home moms, we began writing The Crick Code. (Amongst other creative endeavors.)
This is her story. It is true, and her hope is that everyone who reads it will be empowered to be the author of their own destiny.
Brenda has been open about being the author of these memories, but the childhood community she grew up inside is full of real people — many of them still there. To protect them, and to give Brenda’s younger self room to breathe on the page, we changed the names of the characters (including hers — she becomes Becca) and condensed some memories to happen alongside each other so the story would flow. We label it fiction for those reasons alone. The emotional truth is Brenda’s, exactly as she lived it.
Read the book
Brenda’s story is on the page — hold it in your hands.