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I came from a family of incredible storytellers, but I didn't start writing children's books until I was 41 years old.

I grew up in a house full of books and parents who read, which led to me to reading from a very young age. And reading seemed to naturally progress to writing.

I was kind of an outsider growing up, and I preferred reading to being with other kids. When I was about seven, I started to write my own books. I never thought of myself as wanting to be a writer - I just was one.

I realized very young that I loved reading and wanted to do something related to books/reading for a living. I didn't think of publishing, really, until I was out of college.

By the time I was 12, I was reading my parents' books because there weren't teenage books then.

I was always interested in creative writing growing up. From junior high on, I was writing short stories. I also grew up watching movies. My father would take me to everything. Most weeks, I could open the paper having seen every movie listed.

I didn't start writing my own books until I was 40.

I started to read at a very early age, and I just thought that books and reading were really the most wonderful thing that life had to offer. I think I wrote my very first piece of fiction at the age of 12, but then I didn't write any more for quite a long time.

My early life had a lot to do with my origins as a writer, but I didn't get into doing any writing at all until I was about 35 years old.

I did have a child, and I was reading a lot of picture books to her, but at the same time writing a children's book was something that I'd been wanting to do for many years, pretty much since the start of my career.