IWSG and Caught in the Act

It's time for the Insecure Writer's Support Group post of the month. The question is, how did you know you wanted to be a writer? What prompted you?

This is a question I answer every time I do school author visits. I ask the kids to raise their hands if they want to be an author when they grow up. And the young kids always do. Middle-schoolers, not so much. Guess what? I didn't want to be an author when I grew up. I wanted to be an astronaut or opera singer. I'm neither. This is probably a good thing because the world is much better not hearing my singing voice!

So, how did I get here? You can thank my daughter and my son for that. Here's the story:  When my son was a little baby, he didn't sleep. Neither kid did. Talk about a serious case of sleep deprivation. Four years of less than 4 hours of sleep a night! When you're that sleep-deprived, weird things go on in your head. Like poems. That's what happened. At 3:00 AM one night, a poem popped in. For the rest of the week, I spent my nights in the rocking chair with my 3-month old son, composing the entire story in my head. Later, I shared the poem with my daughter, who was three years old at the time. She said, "Mom that's really good! You should make it a book!"

My sleep-deprived mind thought that was a brilliant idea. So, here I am, 15 years later, still writing. My sixth book comes out this September:  Bubba and Squirt's Mayan Adventure.

The name of the first book?    That Baby Woke Me Up, AGAIN!  


Now, for the story:

If you recall, our German Shepherd, Schultz destroyed his Beaver toy by ripping the seams and taking out all the stuffing. We thought for Christmas, we'd get him a brand new Beavie. Ladies and gentlemen, it took Schultz all of two hours to destroy it. Here he is, in action:



And yes, that is Beavie's heart. Schultz ripped Beavie's heart out! I think Bootsy, the cat has been a terrible influence on him!