My earliest memories are of Texas trees, a creaking porch swing, and stories. Words and books filled my house, my life, and my mind from the very beginning. My mother read us the classics, made up bedtime stories, and eventually published her own novels. Perhaps you’ve read The Dragonkeeper Chronicles?

You might think I was one of those quiet, bookish girls who knew she wanted to be an author when she grew up, but I didn’t separate storytelling from existing when I was young. It didn’t occur to me until my teen years that make-believe was a skill or that writing was a pursuit. For me it was just…life.

Those early teen years were spent between the pages of Jane Eyre or poking along the banks of the Rio Grande River with my brother. Our family had swapped Texas thunderstorms and cicada song for Colorado mountains and the tumultuous tune of snow-fed streams. When we eventually moved away from the river, it took me months to learn to sleep without its lullaby.

My own creative rivulets converged into the study of literature and writing in college, and my fanciful heart found an anchor in a certain engineering student with the brain of a scientist and the eyes of an artist. I finished my college career with a BA in English, a husband, and a baby boy.

A second child followed, and my days were again filled with children’s stories. My first book, The Dragon and the Turtle, came about because of a bedtime story I told my youngest. When a third pregnancy ended in miscarriage, I immersed myself further in the storytelling that had always been central to my identity. I wrote four novels before I wrote The One—the book that found a publisher.

The year Curio was published, our family experienced a crisis that changed our “normal,” and my writing journey took a few detours. But those side trips that have us thinking we’re lost or heading in the wrong direction are so often the plot points that make up The Story—our story. I’m thankful for each step, even when the path was narrow, dark, and rocky.

I still live and breathe story, and sometimes I even manage to pull those tales from my cells and type them out. I will never stop chasing the next word in this living story, but I’ll let go of the ones that don’t belong to me, the ones that are merely passing through. They have their own lives to live in a story that’s no longer mine. But maybe it’s yours?