How it all began…

When I was in Kindergarten, we had daily journals. One entry was titled: What I Want to Be When I Grow Up, and underneath was a drawing of myself with the word: “teacher.” (My parents kept this journal and gave to me a few years ago!) Is it many kiddo’s dream to be a teacher? Of course, but it never left my mind. Besides wanting to be a singer, actor or professional gymnast at one point or another, I always knew I’d be a teacher. My first job at 14 was teaching gymnastics for my local community center. My love for young kids only grew. I went on to graduate with an early childhood education degree and received my Minnesota teaching license for birth through 3rd grade. I then taught Pre-K for 8 years. After my first son was born, and my husband started traveling a lot for work, it became clear to me that I wanted to be home more. I went part-time and co-taught Pre-K for 2 more years (Teachers-if you have an opportunity to do this and it works for your family, jump on it!). I also began teaching EARLY mornings for a Chinese online platform called VIPKid- what an amazing experience! Sadly it dwindled due to new regulations in China (but recently heard those changed again…hmm). Then COVID hit, schools closed down and I didn’t know what the future of my career and family looked like at this point. I began teaching for an online educational platform called Outschool (while staying home with our 2yo). Through Outschool, I had to create my own classes, market them, and teach them through zoom. I created classes called If I Had a Pet ________ (fill in with koala, monkey, shark, elephant, etc). We’d discuss what pets are, how to take care of them, learn about the wild animal that was featured, and if that wild animal would make a good pet. The classes were a HIT and I was booking students like crazy.

Then I thought, “this would make a really fun picture book!"

And, here we are today! My first picture book I ever wrote (besides the one in the third grade), was called If I Had a Pet Koala. A rhyming, fun story about having a pet koala and trying to keep the koala awake! I ADORE this story and still hope to make something of it one day, but I quickly learned my rhyming wasn’t perfect and I had NO idea what meter was. So while that book is currently “shelved” as I learn more about rhyming, I wrote other stories in NON-RHYME.

I thankfully found some AMAZING people in the Twitter Writing Community that were willing to critique my stories, give me some direction into querying (more on that later), and cheer me on! (Seriously, if you are a writer and not on Twitter, run there! Don’t walk! The community is amazing, even with what’s his name messing it up…)

So, that is how it all began… My writing journey… My LOVE for writing. And now my DREAM of becoming a published picture book author.

Stay tuned. :)