When people ask Deborah Morris what she does for a living, she often laughs.
"If I say, 'Oh, I write about kids and teens who've been attacked by sharks, struck
by lightning... those kinds of things,' they look at me like I'm crazy," she
says. "But if they keep asking questions, it only gets worse."
That's because the Garland, Texas resident carries a lot of job titles these days: Author, TV Producer, Disaster Team Leader, Performer-- and of course, Mom. "I stay pretty busy," she admits. "But I couldn't do what I do without help from my husband and kids."
Sometimes that teamwork comes in the form of 20-year-old Steven critiquing a book manuscript, or working as an exhibitor at a trade show where the Real Kids, Real Adventures series is featured-- something he's been doing since he was twelve. Other times, it's her husband, engineer/inventor Terry Morris, who comes to her rescue by creating dazzling special effects for her school presentations. Her daughter, Elisabeth Morris-Saenz, is a published writer who works for her mother as a part-time researcher, while Rachel, 22, acts as Morris's partner on the Red Cross Disaster Action Team. The mother-daughter team, both certified in CPR and emergency first aid, regularly races to the scenes of pre-dawn fires and other Dallas-area disasters to render aid to families left without adequate food, clothing, or shelter.
In her "spare" time, Morris -- also certified as a First Responder -- rides a Harley, acting as a kind of leather-clad guardian angel to groups of bikers participating in rallies and other events by providing emergency first aid through the national Christian Motorcyclists Association (CMA).
The adrenaline rush that comes with such adventures isn't anything new to Morris, who's had to crawl through dark underground caves, climb steep mountains, and go up in helicopters in pursuit of other people's stories over the years. But it was her own family's death-defying experience in 1987 that first set her on the trail of real-life adventures.
"We were on vacation in Florida when a tractor-trailer ran our van off the highway," she recalls. "It sent us crashing through a guardrail and tumbling end over end down into a ravine. It should have killed us, but we all walked away from it. I wrote the story for Guideposts... and that's how I found out that dramatic storytelling was fun. I started writing true-life dramas for Reader's Digest and Good Housekeeping, which eventually led to the Real Kids, Real Adventures and new Teens 911 series. Now I can't imagine doing anything else!"
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