Shelby Beckett was born Barbara Pamplin, in Akron, Ohio. She began writing poetry in grammar school and finished her first novel (illustrated by a friend and still unpublished) at the age of ten. Shelby attended the University of Akron, where she received a B.A. in Latin and Greek, followed by a degree in archaeology from the University of Cincinnati. Although she did not put any of those studies to professional use (except for teaching Latin for several years), they did inspire in her an attraction to the romance of the past and the mythology of ancient times.
Shelby has lived in more than twelve locations in the United States, including Albuquerque, the Blue Ridge Mountains, North Central Florida, and Las Vegas. She has, during her life's journey, been a farm wife in the Oklahoma panhandle and a secretary at the University of Florida; co-owned an advertising and printing business, a stained glass studio, and a therapeutic massage business; taught piano lessons; and presented adult education
classes in ESP development.
Throughout the years of engaging in these varied occupations (which helped to pay the bills), she has also been a Transformational Therapist, doing work that inspired her spiritual self-help book, How to Transform Your Life: Six Steps to Lasting Happiness, published under the name of Barbara Goosen Shelby. A revised version of this book will be available by spring of 2006, under the title What You Believe is What You Receive, and enlarges on the principles shared in Between.
Shelby and her husband, Pete Beckett, make their home in Tulsa, Oklahoma, near her daughter, son-in-law, and grandson. When she isn’t writing or working with clients, she enjoys reading, cooking and ballroom dancing.
