Beth Szillagyi has been a sheet metal worker for over twenty years, and has been writing ever since she learned how. She won several writing contests in high school and college, and spent five years as a journalist in the Army National Guard. Her 'pet' magazine when she started in the construction business was Tradeswomen Magazine, where she published ten stories about being the lone woman amongst a sea of men. (Note: The magazine is now, unfortunately, out of print, but back issues are still available on the Internet, of course!)

The short, non-fiction version of "Hey, Lady!" was first published in Tradeswomen Magazine in the early 1980s. It later found its way to "Hard-Hatted Women," an anthology published by Seal Press in 1988, and finally to Cosmopolitan Magazine in September 1991. She had written the full-length version of the story during this time in first person format. When a publisher suggested the story would sound better in third person as fiction, she changed it again, and all of this with one of those ancient IBM Selectrics! Sheesh! :-)

Beth lives and plays in Central Illinois with her husband and best friend, Bob, who is also a construction worker, and is most happy when writing 'Val' stories, fishing, and tending to her flowers. She is currently at work on her second novel about Val's adventures as a journeywoman and her misadventures as a wicked step-mother, and a third one about a forty-something computer dinosaur jumping into the computer age with both number nines.

 

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