Growing up I was an active child.  All I did was sports and play with friends.  Though I did well in school, it wasn't always a priority. 

As I maneuvered through each grade until graduating from college, my parents gave me vital tools that I still use in many areas of my life today.  My mother constantly challenged me to try things outside the sporting arena.  That led me to be in band, 4H, and boy scouts, and other things I would've otherwise never thought to do.  My father challenged me in a different way.  After every game I played, be it soccer, basketball, or volleyball, we'd walk through games by memory, highlighting certain plays.  We'd talk about what worked, what didn't, what the other team did that worked against me, and how I should adjust if a play happened again.  In those discussions the message of unpredictability would always arise. 

Fast forward to being married with three kids.  As any parent knows, raising children is hard.  Nevertheless, I strived to be a good husband and father.  Outside of my nine to five, I taught myself how to cook instead of thawing frozen dinners.  The flower beds around my house were in desperate need of revival, so I learned how to garden. Since my wife was a teacher, I was in charge of making my children presentable for school, so I learned to braid and style hair.  Those things might seem like crazy over the top things, but to me, I was just solving puzzles.  It's just how my mind works. 

Then one day while tucking my oldest daughter into bed, she asked me an innocent question, "Can you tell me a story?"  She needed a story worthy of my first born so I countered her question with my own, "What type of story do you want?"  As many young girls yearn for in stories, she wanted fairies, mermaids, and castles. 

Having not written anything other than emails since college, I put pen to paper.  As I struggled through tenses and punctuation, my enjoyment was undeniable.  The process woke something that was lying dormant inside of me.  Eventually I finished creating Mermaid Cove.  My daughter's excitement upon hearing the story she requested justified my effort. 

With one story done I had an itch to try another.  At that time my son was very young.  He wasn't able to give me the same type of request as his sister so I created a story he'd hopefully like, one that would stimulate his imagination, similar to what my parents did for me.  Not long after I finished Modern Day Dragons.  It was clever and thought provoking, but when my sister read it the first time, she suggested I make it into a poem.  Being presented with a challenge, I gave it a try. 

As time passed, other stories would present themselves, either through requests or unintended inspiration.  The more I wrote the better the stories became until people started insisting that I publish my stuff.  Besides the encouragement to get my works public, it was always paired with a befuddlement of how my mind worked.  I attribute my crazy brain to the hidden tools my parents gave me.  To me, writing stories is putting a puzzle together.  The pieces of the puzzles are floating out there in everyday life.  The hard part is finding what word fits with a thought that when combined projects an image for children and the adults reading the story. 

My goal in life and in writing is to be unpredictable, engaging, and challenging.  And that is how a person who in grade school wrote, "There is nothing about language arts that I like," becomes an author of children's books that inspires imaginations.