Ever since sharing my new venture as an author, I have been asked many times what made me decide to become a children’s author. It is a question that I know I will get often from children at elementary schools, so I really wanted to think about my answer and be very introspective about it.
The truth is, I have wanted to become an author since elementary school. I remember we had an author named John R. Erickson come to our elementary school to read his series “Hank the Cowdog”! I remember that he was so fun and engaging that I ran straight home and asked my mom for money so that I could purchase one of his books. I wanted to be just like him when I was a grown up!
I was always an avid reader and I loved series books such as “The Babysitters Club”, “American Girl” and anything by R.L. Stein! I loved being whisked away into a different world, all from the comfort of my bed. I also enjoyed writing poetry of my own and would create poetry books often! In seventh grade, I wrote a short story about spending time with my grandpa who had passed away. My teacher was so moved by the story that she sent it to a national paper called “The High School Writer” which then published my story! I felt such a strong feeling of accomplishment after that which made me want to continue to pursue writing!
I ended up marrying young, graduating from college with my teaching degree and giving birth to my first child just weeks after graduation. After that, my life became a blur. I wrote occasionally on my personal blog and in my journal, but that was the extent of it. I continued reading with a passion though!
In 2013, my son, then only three years old, was diagnosed with cancer. He passed less than a year after bing diagnosed with AT/RT. I went through a dark period after that where I reevaluated everything in my entire life. My religion, my beliefs and even my plan for my own life. I found writing to be very therapeutic for me during that time, and I wrote about my experiences as a grieving mother in a 300 page memoir which I never published. I never published it because I realized that every year, I felt differently about my grief and thought it would be better to write about everything after gaining more perspective about my life.
Watching my oldest daughter suffer with her feelings about grief, I knew that I wanted to write stories to help children to learn about their emotions or books to make them laugh and forget about their troubles. I again looked back to elementary school assembly with John R. Erikson, and I knew that it was time for me to follow through with my own dream; to become an author and spend my days reading to children and making them smile.
So why do I write Chidren’s books? Well, my hope is that I can inspire other young writers to realize that they too can make their dreams come true. And if I can make then smile and dream in the meantime, even better!