When ever someone finds out that I wrote a book, I always get, "What made you want to do that?" I can't say that it was a conscious decision. I always enjoyed writing. I was fairly good in English while in high school. I enjoyed it certainly but never really considered it a career choice. After high school I went to a non-traditional college and still did very well in English.
Years later after having a child and getting married I started to think about writing again. However, at that time the Internet was not what it is today. You still had to do it by snail mail, send in your SASE and wait. So I did. What I wrote made no great impression and if I did get a response it was never positive. So life happened and the writing was put on the back burner.
Many years later now I found myself unexpectedly pregnant with our third child. So I started writing again in hopes that I could stay home with this one, ha ha. That story is still waiting to be published. (I hope it will be the next one.) Then 11 months later I was unexpectedly pregnant again with our fourth child. (I know what you are thinking, doesn't she know how to prevent that. I really did think I had it under control.) So I started writing again. This story would become Bia Gets a New Baby Brother after many re-writes.
So the writing just sat there because I still didn't know what to do until one day I was on Google and I typed in literary agencies. I happen to find one that was geared toward children writings. So I signed with them and they put it in their data base. In the mean time I could not shop it to anyone else. So for two years it continued to sit and I re-wrote the entire thing.
In passing I was talking to my mother who told me that if I wanted to do it I should pursue it, as "Time is going to pass anyway, you might as well do what you want". So I did. I pursued it. Eventually Strategic Publishing Group contacted me and I worked with them for over a year in order to get it to print.
I really just wanted to do something that I love, that I can leave behind for my children, their children, etc. I like to think that somewhere there are children reading my book and smiling and laughing, that they are enjoying reading it as much as I had hoped.
So, I want to say Thanks Mom. Without her simple insight, that book would probably still be sitting on a disc somewhere just waiting to be read.
Till next time.
Katie
