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I'm a schoolteacher and a writer. So that's what I do.

I enjoy writing for third and fourth graders most of all.

For all its ups and downs and challenges, I love writing. We only grow through adversity, so I welcome the difficulties, knowing bumps in the road are my greatest teachers.

I've been writing stories, in one form or another, since I was a kid.

I was a better writer when I was teaching. I was constantly going over the basics and constantly reminding myself, as I reminded my students, what made a good story, a good poem.

I teach one semester a year, and this year I'm just teaching one course during that semester, a writing workshop for older students in their late 20s and early 30s, people in our graduate program who are already working on a manuscript and trying to bring it to completion.

It was my fifth grade teacher who introduced the idea that writing could be more than a hobby for me.

I write books for all age groups - young kids, teenagers and adults - because I get a range of different ideas.