Perhaps a more seasoned author would have told you exactly what she was doing in the first post. Clearly that’s not how I roll.

I wrote a story for 9-12 year old girls. Yes, of course boys can read it too, but I’m just being realistic; I know they won’t want to. That’s okay. I have no delusions that this story will appeal to every single human on the planet. The working title is Soprano Trouble, and it follows 7th grader Summer McKidd and her friends through an incident at their fall choir concert that sets Summer on a path that will force her to make some decisions about friends.

Here’s my big confession for the day: I loved The Babysitter’s Club series as a kid. My parents enrolled me in some type of book club when I was in third or fourth grade, and I got three books every month. I read those book over and over and over. They are dog eared and water damaged (from reading them in the bathtub) and yes, I still have them. I believe I have close to 100. (Maybe not. I have a lot. I’ve loaned them out at the moment, so I can’t go verify.) But those books are what sparked the dream of writing in my heart. I’m an introvert who loves being home, and I know there are others out there like me. We all just want to read.

I’m all grown up now, and while I do like to read grown up stuff, when I think of writing I think of stories for kids who like to read chapter books. When I was 14, my beloved English teacher told my parents to force me to stop reading The Babysitter’s Club. So they forbid me for a summer. That might have been the summer I discovered The Christy Miller Series. That series was very formative in how I saw friendships, boy/girl relationships, and my relationship with the Lord. While I happen to think that series is timeless, I know that girls these days might not be so thrilled to read something their mothers loved. So I want to create something new for them.

I want to write stories that moms won’t be afraid to give to their daughters. I want to write stories that model what life can look like for normal people, rather than what it looks like according to Hollywood. Mostly, though, I want to write characters that girls think of as their friends. And maybe when they’re in college and chatting about books they love with their friends, someone will tell them, “stop talking about those characters like they’re real!” (That may or may not have happened to me.)

And if middle-grade/young adult fiction isn’t your bag, don’t worry. I have some other ideas up my sleeve that I would love to explore someday. Who knows?

This is my dream. Now you know. Thanks for reading. 🙂