It's coming into writing contest season! This is my entry for Fall Frenzy, put on by Lydia Lukidis and Kaitlyn Sanchez (who I just got to hear from at the SCBWI Rocky Mountain annual conference!) I hope this gets you into the Halloween spirit, I sure had fun creating it.

photo credit: Unsplash via Marko Blažević

The sun is starting to shine directly into my office mid-mornings, usually about the time I have morning meetings with colleagues. It’s only mid-August and still feels like summer, but it’s interesting to think about the fact that the sun is already making its way towards its low point in the sky. 

Sometimes the ideas and thoughts flood in as soon as your head hits the pillow

Have you ever been so excited about a project you're waking up thinking about it? I've been waking up at 6am for over a week now. As soon as I wake up (and sometimes in my dreams like today) I'm thinking about a story.

Here in Colorado we had our first snow and the days are getting quite noticeably shorter. I wake up in the darkness and the sun sets shortly after I pick up my daughter from preschool in the evenings. For a lot of people this time of year is hard – they miss the warmth and long days of sunlight.

For me, I kind of like the dark. Actually there are a lot of things I like about it.

Almost all of my poetry and picture book stories are inspired by nature – by getting outside and the adventures I have.

It’s been a wonderful writing year and yet much slower than I’d expected. As those in the writing industry know, it’s not as easy as writing a story and sending it off to get published. I did, however, try that.

“A good children’s book can be read by an adult to a child, and experienced genuinely by both.” – Anna Dewdney

This quote is really at the core of my picture book writing, though I only recently came across it.

Here’s my take on creating a fun springtime story in just 150 words for the Spring Fling Kidlit writing contest!

As I mentioned in my first blog post, I somehow wasn’t aware of all the not-so-great picture books that make it to bookstores. I’ve started being a bit pickier in what books I choose to buy and have been actively searching out more books that highlight our connection to nature and the joys of being outside.

Here I am at the beginning of my picture book writing journey. Daring to step through a doorway into the world of kidlit.

I’ve always enjoyed writing. As an adult I loved writing short poems while out camping, trying to capture a moment in time I’d describe the day or our surroundings. Thunderstorms rolling through camp, what a day of crack climbing in the desert was like, or waking up to snow in late fall in one of our favorite canyons (Rifle Mountain Park). But these poems were for myself, I never thought of publishing.