As a little girl I dreamed of growing up to be a brain surgeon. Or an astrophysicist. Or even—in my wildest dreams—a molecular engineer!

Okay, not really. I just thought it would be a change from the usual "I always loved to read and I dreamed of being a writer someday." But in my case the cliché is true—I did always love to read, and I did spend a lot of time as a kid scribbling stories into little notebooks.

The few surviving pieces from this early period indicate that I had a good imagination but a fairly underdeveloped work ethic, as very few of them are actually finished. An exception is this poem I wrote in first grade, which I not only completed, but which garnered my first writing award.

I did take some writing classes while earning a Bachelor's degree at the University of Michigan, but after I'd graduated, married, started a family, and spent years working for a nonprofit health agency, all thoughts of writing as a career were buried under layers of laundry and sheaves of permission slips. Then a funny thing happened—the more I read books to my kids, the more I realized how much I loved them (the books, I mean. Well, both, really.).



Writing for children seemed like a way to discover whether I had any kind of talent—let alone a future—as an author. A few years and a lot of research later, I made my first sale. Cobblestone Magazine bought a story I'd pitched on the topic of quilting in colonial America, and I was a professional writer.

For several years, I continued to publish stories, articles, poems and plays in children's magazines. Some were reprinted in anthologies, giving me my first book credits. Along the way I dipped a toe into the adult market by publishing essays in two Chicken Soup for the Soul collections.

In 2009, I was thrilled when a children's editor I had worked with asked if I would be interested in writing a book for middle grade readers (ages 8-12). I pulled out a manuscript I had been tinkering with for several years and sent her the first few chapters. In what can only be called a "pinch me, I must be dreaming" moment, she wrote back immediately: "I love it! Hurry and send the rest!" In April 2010, Pauline Kids published
Anna Mei, Cartoon Girl, the story of an eleven-year-old girl who fears she's just too different to ever fit in. A sequel, Anna Mei, Escape Artist, came out in March 2011. The final title in the series, Blessing in Disguise, is scheduled for November 2011.

To make life even sweeter for a book lover like me, I also work in the marketing department of a large district library system, where I'm constantly surrounded by great writing. I'm hoping some of it squishes into my brain—and maybe even onto my blank pages—by some kind of osmosis. In the meantime, I've been privileged to meet authors from many genres and to hear their personal stories. Along with my children, they inspire me on this amazing journey from notebook scribbler to published author.