"I had the feeling that I could do two big things well," she said, "but that I couldn’t do three big things well. One was teaching, one was writing, one was having a family." Because of this, she decided to leave academia.

Much of her time since then has been spent balancing her family life in Cooperstown with her writing. She has three healthy children, two cats, and a husband devoted to his work as a doctor at Bassett Healthcare. Between chores and errands, she has written seven books of fiction and poetry, many of which have garnered numerous awards. The Wolf Pit, her latest novel, won the Michael Shaara Award for Civil War Fiction in 2001 and was short-listed for the Southern Book Award in 2002.

Youmans attributes her success in both aspects of her life to one quality of her personality.

"I have what people tell me is a very strong ability to focus and concentrate on what I’m doing," she said, "so that I actually have written with children in the room, making noise. And I have been able to do household work while thinking things out, even going back and forth, writing, scribbling, and doing some chore."

Her intense drive to write, she said, has also kept her going during the busiest times of her life.

"I have at certain times sacrificed things like sleeping in order to write," she said.

When her family moved to Cooperstown, she had been sick while pregnant with her third child and had already moved once before within the last year. Yet she still found the energy and drive to draft The Wolf Pit.

"Before I unpacked my office, I unpacked my computer, and I sat down and I wrote that book. I wrote it at night. I would write from whenever I got the kids in bed and all my work done until I fell over."

Having a family has affected her writing in many other ways as well.

"It’s something I think that is helpful, to be grounded in that way and to be living a full life," she said. "It’s good for your writing. And things come out of it that you don’t expect because you’re not in control. And you write things you never would have written if you weren’t living that kind of life."

Youmans’ devotion to her children is reflected often in her fiction. She wrote The Wolf Pit because her eldest son had always been fascinated with military history. So when he was in the second grade, she and her husband took him to visit many Civil War museums and battlefields. The material just sank into her subconscious, she said.

Also, her two fantasy novels for young adults, Ingledove and The Curse of the Raven Mocker, were inspired by her daughter, who had been reading a lot of fantasy novels and wanted Youmans to write one for her.

"I had read a lot of what she read," Youmans said, "and I was struck by how American writers always wrote very European- and English-based work. And I said, finally, I will write you one, but I’m going to set it where I’m from, I’m going to set it in the South, I’m going to set it in the mountains."

Her children have also been affected by having a writer for a mother.

"When they first saw a book of mine in a bookstore," she said, "they were very upsetůmy books had been stolen!" Two of her children, she added, have grown up writing much themselves and may very well continue to do so. Her daughter loves to draw.

Marly Youmans has a limited edition novella series forthcoming next year titled Val/Orson. At a talk she gave at the Huntington Memorial Library in Oneonta earlier this month, she also read from a manuscript she drafted recently at Yaddo called Maze of Blood.

When asked what she is currently working on, Youmans will skirt the question. Readers must expect the unexpected. With two historical novels, two young adult novels, a collection of poetry, and various other works, her bibliography is diverse.

"People jump into your life at different points, and if that’s the first book they encounter, then that’s what you are to them," she said. "You can’t do that with my work, because in general I don’t do the same thing twice.

"It’s water from the same fountain," she added, "it just gets poured into different shapes."

Has living here affected her writing at all?

"Definitely yes," she asserted with a laugh. "I get a lot of writing done because I don’t like to go outside as much when it’s cold!"