By Sandra Fleming: The Gazette, July 27, 2002.

Lodi, OH – Author Sharon Yorks grew up doing what most little girls could only dream about – entering rodeo competitions and doing fancy trick riding on her own and much-loved horse.

If that isn’t enough to satisfy youthful fantasies, how about your dad owns a wild west show and …. you’ve got a twin sister to share all this largesse with. It kind of reminds one of a Disney movie, doesn’t it?

Yorks was doing trick riding by the time she was eight years old.  Now 41, the soft-spoken woman talks eagerly and at times, humorously, about her rodeo days. “I used to ride bulls too. You think of it now and you wonder why you would do something so stupid,” she chuckled.

“I Loved it,” she said of growing up and touring with her dad’s show. The whole family, including her mother, brother, half-sister, and of course her twin sister. Karen. She tells of how the show would pull into a town in the middle of the night and they’d set everything up the next morning; “If we had a two-day show, it was a luxury.”  We would have a 2 o’clock and an 8 o’clock show.  The 8 o’clock show would be over around 10. By 10:30 or 11:00, everything was pretty well put down and, on the trucks, and by midnight we’d be headed to the next one – every day.

The Wild West show’s winner quarters was in Florida and during those months, Yorks explained that, through the circus people the family was acquainted with, she grew up with an assortment of non-rodeo animals, too. By the time she was a teenager, she had ridden more than a few exotic animals, like yak, camel, ostrich and elephant.

“We had elephants, lions – almost any animal. we didn’t have giraffes,” she mused, but almost any animal we had at the house. I remember having a chimpanzee and little bottle. It was an itty-bitty chimp that was blue in the face and I’ll never forget the way he was looking at me.  It was just like a little baby. How many kids get that opportunity?  I remember going to the 711 (store) with a lion cub in my hands,” she added.

Yorks sold her last barrel horse just last year and is no longer involved in rodeos.  She has, however, embarked on a new career with the publication of her first inspiration young adult novel, “The Twin Who Wins” (Tumbleweed Publishing: $5.99 Paperback). This is the first in a series of stories about twin girls, Cassie and Kendra who are high school rodeo barrel racers trying to qualify for the National High School Finals Rodeo.

Talking about writing that you know! The book, however, is not biographical. Yes, Sharon and Karen were barrel racing competitors and Yorks was able to draw from the experience, but the book is fiction.

“The whole idea from this story came from the fact that she (Karen) was the one that always won – except for the two years that I really gave her a run for her money and took the championship away, “chuckled Yorks and then added, “but that is what not makes you a winner.”

She went onto to explain that she feels her relationship with God and having the time to do things she enjoys makes her a winner too. “I’m the twin that one. That’s the thought that started it and then it just went off on its own little story.”

The author quickly and eagerly points out that her twin. Karen Mostoller-Sheonmeyer, holds 24 year-end championships in four associations and has started her own barrel racing association. “Its Eastern Barrel Futurity Association/International Barrel Racing Association. Yorks maintains that her sister was her toughest competitor and inspiration to write “The Twin Who Wins.”

York’s fictional twins are full of personality and truly keep the story moving along. “The Twin Who Wins,” Cassie is the twin who never seems to win and is determined to fix all of the problems that she and her horse, Scooter, are having in the barrel racing competitions. She is one determined teenage and, she eventually learns what winning is all about.

The book is interesting and inspirational and gets its message across without being “preachy.” It is a well-written story about teenage twins, horses and rodeos with all the accompanying excitement. Tbe book’s other characters fall into place naturally and believably.  The setting, by the way, is local.

“There are a lot of rodeos in Ohio. People think you have to go out west for rodeos,” said Yorks and explained that, from Ohio, one could easily travel to rodeos in New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Tennessee, Indiana and Kentucky.

Being a stickler for detail, Yorks ascertained that rodeos were indeed being held in the locations in her book. “It’s a fictional story, but all the details are very real,” she said.

Yorks has plans for at least three more books in what she entitled, “The Cloverleaf Series,” the second, which will be out in January. “I’m very happy,” she said. “I’m loving writing and I just can’t get enough of it.”

She also has an ABC Christian Coloring book coming out in the fall and a planned book series for ages 4-7, entitled, “The Moues on the Move” that is still in the works.

Yorks, lives in Lodi with her husband, Donnie, a heavy equipment operator for Fechko Excavating, and her two sons Shardon, 6, and Caylum, 2. She has a grown daughter, Stephanie, who lives in Canton.