I’ve been a writer all my life. As a child I wrote short stories and poems, and graduated to writing songs in young adulthood. It’s always been an enjoyable way for me to express myself. Now as an adult with two children, the inspiration to create comes in different ways, and it’s mostly through clever things my kids say.

When my son was small, I began telling him stories as I rocked him to sleep, and each night the same story would develop as I told it. It started to take form and become something I thought Jack would enjoy having as a book that his mommy wrote. In 2015, I searched for a way to print this story just for fun, but I knew every good children’s book needed some illustrations to go with it. That’s when I stumbled across the website www.storybird.com. This site allowed for me to look through illustrations that best matched my story, publish it on their site, and then print a few books for myself, friends and family.

We enjoyed reading our book at home, and I didn’t think much of sharing it with the world until I returned to storybird.com to print a few more copies, and much to my surprise, I had hundreds of hearts and comments from people who had read my book on the website and really liked it! I was blown away by the positive encouragement. And so the seed was planted. Scroll down to see some of the original illustrations from storybird.com. PLUS, you can still visit their site and see the original manuscript and illustrations of this book by clicking HERE. 

In the years following, the book ideas owed, prompted by adorable things said by my son and daughter, and silly experiences with our doodles. I began considering a new phrase that my son repeated incorrectly (and adorably) and imagined creating a new story centered around him. That’s when “Have A Good Day, Alligator” came to life. And this time, when I went to nd illustrations to accompany my story, I turned to a wonderful family friend, Megan Duff, who spent her early career working as an artist at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

Writing for my kids and about my kids is a joy. It almost seems like the ideas fall in my lap since they say plenty of hilarious and random things on a daily basis. But before moving on to the next story, I knew I had to revisit my first project from 2015 that never got fully realized. This story about a birdie who was searching for a quiet place to live became my focus in 2022. I reopened the original manuscript, and brainstormed with Megan to create engaging and clever illustrations that all have a story in and of themselves.

I love living in the moment and noticing the world around me because there is always something to delight in if I just take the time to really notice.