I was always told that I should write.  And my reply?  “Not a chance, I don’t have the patience for it.”  Like all other writers, I dabbled in it from time to time, but I wasn’t one of those hard-core fanatics that started writing when I learned to use my hands.  Instead, my writing background goes a little like this: 

I created my very first book in the fourth grade (with a cover tied together with red string) full of short and silly stories, making fun of my fellow classmates via metaphor, illustrated by yours truly.  (Ironically enough, I still do this...  hence Mean Girls Poetry.) 

In my junior year of high school, I read a lot of Stephen King and Dean Koontz and decided that I was going to write a story following in their footsteps.  So, I wrote the first chapter of my diabolical thriller, which wasn’t so bad if I say so myself, and gave up on the second.

This brings me to my fourth year of college and my next attempt at writing.  I was watching a movie based on a story from a famous children’s author and thought to myself, “I can do that.”  This thought lit the biggest fire in my life.  In between winter, spring, and summer terms, I kicked out Legend of Magia, which was over three hundred pages in text. 

Legend of Magia showed me two things: (1) Somehow I managed to have enough patience to write it and (2) I liked writing…  a lot.  Since then, I’ve caught the “writing bug” and haven’t been able to get rid of it since.  

I joined the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and, most recently, I became the co-representative for Willamette Writers Salem Chapter.  I've had several article, poems, and stories published in several magazine.  As I work on raking in those publication credits, I hold out hope and wait for the moment when I can hold my book with only my name on it (okay, maybe the illustrator can have their name on it too), equipped with a pretty front and back cover, preferably not held together with red string.  

Why children's stories?  I love writing children's stories because they're fun!  If I want to create a cross-dressing Tooth Fairy, named Ted, that lives in Manhattan and works at Starbucks, I can.  And besides, the unbelievable is so much more interesting than reality...  don't you think?

And here I am now, and this is where I’m at in my writing saga.

To be continued…