When I was in third grade, my teacher had us draw a character she called “Dirty Dan.” My brother had the same teacher a few years earlier and had written a story about Dirty Dan, so of course I wanted to write one too. I must’ve really loved it, because that was when I first decided I wanted to be an author when I grew up.

In fourth grade, we did creative writing every day in class. That was also the year some of the other kids started teasing me, and writing became a healthy escape for me — and it really cemented my dream of becoming an author. I wrote tons of short one- and two-page stories, often putting my classmates in them (usually in a positive way).

Fifth grade was similar, just without the daily creative writing time at school. But I kept writing on my own and even started some Star Wars fan fiction where I wrote myself into the universe. I wanted to make sure it wouldn’t come true anytime soon, so I made myself “really old” in the story — 18!

In sixth grade, I went to a new school and wrote my first series of short stories, Sleeping Girl, which was a mix of Sleeping Beauty and Anastasia with my own twists. I also wrote my first “longer” story, The Way to Charm. The school librarian, Mrs. Harper, was a huge encouragement, and thanks to her enthusiasm, I felt brave enough to start tackling longer stories.

Seventh grade brought yet another new school — and later homeschooling. Around that time, my good friend Nathan and I came up with a long, complicated story about characters we called the Knight Girls (Joan, Mary, and Crystal) and their friend Quinton. I started writing a lot of it down, even on a typewriter.

And in eighth grade, I finally started writing my first full-length novel: Mysterious Warriors…