Check out the true story from 2020 about a Gila monster, way down...

She was born in El Paso, Texas, and lived in Tucson, Arizona.

She wrote most of her juvenile works (especially in the 1990s) under the name Lynn Beach.

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/tucson/name/kathryn-lance-obituary?id=32727465
(with photo)

Kathryn (KL) Lance passed away January 29, 2022, she was born in the year of the gray pennies and was fortunate to spend most of her childhood in Tucson. From the time she could hold a pencil she wanted to be a writer, and much of her remaining life was devoted to eclectic reading and professional writing.

Her first book, Running for Health and Beauty (1977), the first guide to running for women, sold half a million copies, and was often credited with helping to start the running movement.

Over the course of KL's career, she published sixty books. Her favorites were the three books in The Pandora's Trilogy, a science fiction adventure that she felt encapsulated everything she had ever believed or cared about. The following quote from a review in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, a major science fiction publication, was the culmination of all she had worked for in her many years as a writer.

"Kathryn Lance paints beautiful word-pictures and has a fantastic sense for emotional truth. This is one trilogy that starts good and gets better with each book; Pandora's Promise (the third book) is the best."

In addition to writing, KL was passionate about the natural world, and expressed that love through outdoor activities, including several years as a volunteer at Tohono Chul and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. Sadly, KL outlived her parents, younger brother and sister, and her husband, Stuart "Rocko" Herzog. At home, her love was devoted to a myriad of real-life and online friends, and her beloved cats, Tasha and Shala.

Memorial donations may be made to Tohono Chul, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum or any organization that honors and cares for animals or people.

Published by Arizona Daily Star on Feb. 6, 2022.
_______________________________________________________

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Kathryn_Lance
(categorized booklist - fiction only)

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/b/lynn-beach/
(some book covers - mostly the juvenile ones)

https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=578870548&q=books+%22kathryn+lance%22&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiZzfiF6qWCAxW6g4kEHecLA-EQ0pQJegQICBAB&biw=1920&bih=925&dpr=1
(more book covers)

https://klandherbooks.blogspot.com/
(a LONG article by Lance on how to write)

https://backyardbirds.blogspot.com/
(Lance's long nature journal - it starts off with the rescue of a Gila monster!)

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/158040.Kathryn_Lance
(reader reviews)

https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/102976.Lynn_Beach
(more reviews)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAsLt82wUwGSiJmLvmHr7Jw
(a few animal videos she made)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAsLt82wUwGSiJmLvmHr7Jw
(memorial slideshow - 2:50 minutes)

From "Contemporary Authors":

"Since I was a child, I've been interested in all fields of science and in science fiction. My first extant story, written at about the age of eight, was called `The Phantom From Space.' I believe, as Isaac Asimov has said, that one of the most important functions of science fiction is `to accustom us to change.' My father's mother came West on a covered wagon and worked as a child in a cotton mill. She lived to see men walk on the moon. The rate of technological change seems to be accelerating, and science fiction is perhaps the best way of exploring the effects of these changes on all areas of society. It is interesting to me that more and more `mainstream' writers--Margaret Atwood, for example--are finding the best way to express their visions in what I would consider to be science fiction. Of course such books are not marketed as science fiction, the kiss of death for literary ambitions.

"For me, writing science fiction is very natural. I've always read it, so it seems a very comfortable genre in which to tell my stories. Pandora's Genes, my first novel, began in two ways: first, I had read an article in the New York Times business section about a legal battle over the patenting of a genetically altered bacterium that would be able to eat oil spills. I immediately thought, `Great, but what if your car catches it?' Sometime later the opening scene of my novel appeared to me in a dream. It was only after I got into writing it that I realized it took place in a world ruined by the oil-eating bacterium run amok."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Lance

Her entire entry (not including the references):

Kathryn Lance (November 26, 1943 – January 29, 2022) was an American writer in many fields of fiction and non-fiction under her own name and various pseudonyms, as well as being the ghostwriter for numerous books purportedly written by other people. She had written dozens of young adult novels in the science-fiction, mystery, and horror genres, many of them in series as by Lynn Beach. She had also written magazine articles and stories for both adults and children. Her topics included diet, sports, fitness,[1] sexuality, and biotechnology, in both corporate publications and such national periodicals as Family Circle, Parade, Self, Town & Country, Ladies Home Journal, and Writer's Digest.

Biography

Kathryn Lance was born in November 26, 1943, in El Paso, Texas. After growing up in Tucson, Arizona, Lance received degrees from the University of Arizona, including a master's in Russian. Moving to New York City in 1970, she initially wrote hundreds of scripts for the television soap operas Another World, Somerset, All My Children, and One Life to Live through 1973, then worked for Scholastic Magazines as associate editor until 1976. While there, she created and wrote The Halls of Haywood High, a successful teenage soap opera published biweekly in Senior Scholastic Magazine. In 1976 she published her first book, Running for Health and Beauty, which sold 500,000 copies in all editions. The first mass-market book about running, it is considered to have helped start the fitness boom.

She then turned to freelancing full-time, writing dozens of books, both fiction and nonfiction. Her first science-fiction novel for adults, Pandora’s Genes, was named to the Locus magazine Recommended list for 1986 and was chosen Best New Science Fiction of 1985 by Romantic Times.

Lance returned to Tucson in 1989, where she lived with her husband and four cats. In addition to writing, she had also taught novel-writing and other writing courses. Semi-retired in 2009, she wrote fiction and was a docent at Tohono Chul Park, leading nature walks. She was also a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America and the Author’s Guild, and previously a board member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

Bibliography
Adult nonfiction books

Running for Health and Beauty. Bobbs-Merrill, 1977; Bantam, 1978.[2]
Getting Strong. Bobbs-Merrill, 1978; Bantam, 1979.[1][3] First mass-market book on weight training for women. More than 150,000 sold.
A Woman's Guide to Spectator Sports. A & W, 1980. Alternate selection of Book of the Month Club.
Total Sexual Fitness for Women, in collaboration with Maria Agardy. Rawson, Wade, 1981.
Sportsbeauty. Avon, 1984.
The Setpoint Diet, as by Dr. Gilbert Leveille (ghostwritten). Ballantine, 1985. New York Times Sunday paperback best-seller list for six weeks; over 400,000 printed.
Low-Impact Aerobics, Crown, 1988.
The Princeton Plan, as by Edwin Heleniak, M.D. and Barbara Aston, M.S. (ghostwritten). St. Martins, 1990.
The Body Code, by Jay Cooper with Kathryn Lance. Pocket, 1999. Alternate Selection of Book of the Month Club.
The Botox Book, by Everett M. Lautin, M.D., and Suzanne M. Levine, D.P.M., and Kathryn Lance. M. Evans, 2002.
You Don’t Need Plastic Surgery, by Everett M. Lautin, M.D., and Suzanne M. Levine, D.P.M. and Kathryn Lance, M. Evans, 2003.
Heart and Soul: A Psychological and Spiritual Guide to Preventing and Healing Heart Disease, as by Bruno Cortis, M.D., (ghostwritten). Villard, 1995; Pocket, 1996.
Unlocking the Animal Mind, by Franklin D. McMillan, D.V.M., with Kathryn Lance. Rodale, 2004.[4]

Adult fiction

"Barbara Ann,” short story based on her sister’s death, in Story: Yearbook of Discovery, 1968.
"Welcome to Valhalla," short story by Kathryn Lance and Jack McDevitt, Asimov’s Science Fiction, December, 2008.
Anthologized in Cryptic: The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt, Subterranean Press, 2009.
Pandora's Genes. Questar, 1985. Winner, Best New Science Fiction Novel 1985, Romantic Times; Locus magazine Recommended List, 1986.
Smashwords and Kindle editions, 2011.
Pandora's Children. Questar, 1986.
Smashwords and Kindle editions, 2011.
The Ptorrigan Lode, novella, Smashwords and Kindle, 2011.
Pandora's Promise, 2015.

Young Adult and/or juvenile nonfiction

As written by Lynn Beach: Dozens of articles and booklets on science, health, nutrition, consumerism, technology, space exploration, lifestyles, in national and regional publications.

Young Adult and/or juvenile fiction

Going to See Grassy Ella, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, May, 1993. Named Recommended Book for Reluctant Young Readers 1994 by Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Association
German edition 1995.
Smashwords and Kindle editions, 2011.