“In 1978,” she said, “we were on a cruise to somewhere, and the cruise director began asking questions about who I was and so on. He said, ‘You should speak to the passengers about your life.’ When we came back to Los Angeles, I received a letter from the Royal Viking Line, asking if I would be interested in becoming an enrichment lecturer.”

She accepted, and her first trip was to Russia. It was during the cold war, however, and she had to stay on the ship when it docked, out of concern that she might not be allowed to leave Russia again. “I went to Russia about seven times, but I never got off the ship,” she said. “But I had no one left in Russia. Seeing my beloved city (Leningrad) would have been very pleasant but also very painful.”

Twice a year for 10 years, she gave lectures on different subjects and autographed her books. “Then my husband became ill, and we couldn’t travel anymore,” she said. He died in 1994, after 34 years of marriage.

Writing has been part of her life from a very young age. A story she wrote at age seven was published in a school magazine. In a special after-school playwriting program, she was part of a group of 10 students who created a Russian version of Huckleberry Finn for children’s theater, which she says “is still being performed in Russia.” She had four short stories published there.

Perhaps not surprisingly, her own favorite book is Shurik: A Story of the Siege of Leningrad, published in 1970, which is still in print. It’s about an orphan boy (named Shurik) whom Wayne saved during the war, and it “really speaks from the heart about what we all went through during Siege of Leningrad.”

Singing had been a huge part of her life, and it wasn’t by choice that she stopped singing 25 years ago. “I had my thyroid removed, and they nipped the nerve of my vocal cord,” she said. “I remember we had a big party at our house, and people always asked me to sing.” This time, however, “terrible sounds came out of my mouth. I cleared my throat and then nothing. The next day, the doctor examined me and said my vocal cords had atrophied. It stopped me forever. That I really missed.”

Nowadays, Wayne lives with her family in Washington State, in a large house that sits in a forest alongside the water. She takes tremendous pride in her five grandchildren, who range in age from 13 to 25, “each one brilliant.” One of them, Christopher, designed the covers of her latest books, The Chaperone and Memoirs of a Piano. Upcoming plans include a party for her 90th birthday, and, of course, she’s working on another book.

There’s so much we’ve left out. The Clean Air Program—intended to eradicate smog—that she founded in Los Angeles County in the 1960s and succeeded in a “modest” way before folding. The recent book that was abandoned to the “special drawer” because she thought it wasn’t good enough. The screenplays of her other books that almost got produced, but didn’t. The dogs in her life that have had such unique adventures that she turned those into books. You get the idea.

Click here to see Kyra Petrovskaya Wayne's photos on her Web site and to learn more about her life and books. View the Silver Star Photo Gallery of Kyra on Silver Planet.