Whenever I tell someone I wrote a book, they always ask, “What made you want to write?”

I always give an awkward smile and say something like, “Um, it’s fun?”

The truth is, I have absolutely no idea what made me start writing. Growing up I never thought about writing. I didn’t even – dare I say it – read. At all. I read when I had to for school, but my teenage self thought my time would be better spent looking, thinking, and daydreaming about boys. It wasn’t until my second year of college that I realized how amazing getting lost in a book could be. The first book that started my love affair with reading was Harry Potter. I blame J.K. Rowling for grades that semester. (Or I blame Beeg, who I was dating at the time)

Fast-forward seven and a half years to the morning of June 19, 2013. I was married, had three kids, and was pregnant with my fourth. That morning I woke up to my daughter flipping on and off my lights like a strobe light. While I was getting dizzy from the incessant light switching, I started thinking about a regency era book I had read the night before. Then I thought how weird it would be if I could go back for just one day to see what it was like. They didn’t have electricity, or air conditioning, or cell phones. What did they do?

Then with my next thought came an entire story. I knew the characters names, where they lived, their personalities, their flaws, what happens, the conflict, the bad guy, who dies, who lives, and who lives happily ever after. All in a matter of seconds, I had this story in my head for a full trilogy, and do you know what I did?

I laughed.

I rolled out of bed, put on yoga pants clothes for the day, and started fixing breakfast. We had a very busy day full of Hot Wheels track building, tea parties with stuffed animals, filling bowls with water so all the Barbies and Little People figurines could go swimming, naps, meals, and – let’s be honest – watching shows. Throughout the day, these characters would pop in my head, but I dismissed them quickly. And then I’d laugh again at the thought of me writing a book. The girl who didn’t read anything for fun until she was almost twenty.

My husband’s job was one that had him incredibly busy during the summer. I saw him when he’d kiss me goodbye in the morning at 6am, and then maybe I’d see him at night if I could stay up long enough. My kids went to bed at 7pm, so during the summer months, I had five hours at night to myself. I refused to clean because I did that all day, you can only watch the entire Friends series so many times, and I don’t have a crafty bone in my body.

So that night, I put my kids to bed, grabbed a handful of Hershey Kisses, and stared at my phone (where I wrote a lot of the book. I was pregnant, my bed was comfy, don’t judge the laziness) for over an hour. I just stared at the blinking cursor as it mocked my incompetence because I couldn’t even write one word. Then I thought, okay, I’ll just start writing whatever is in my head.

It went exactly like this:

I’m writing a book. Is it writing a book? Or is it typing a book? Maybe they shouldn’t be called writers. Maybe typers is a better description. That reminds me, I need to buy ink for the printer at Costco. We need bread, fruit, and granola bars too. I’m getting off track.

Okay, I’m writing (typing) a book. Why am I writing a book? This is stupid.

**Eat another Hershey Kiss, and maybe a cookie from a batch I froze from the week before.

I’m writing a book. The girl’s name is Grace. She goes back in time.

I feel like an idiot.

Grace goes back to the year 1810 where she meets the Denleys. Is it weird to be writing about a boy through the eyes of a teenage girl when I’m married? Oh no, it’s more weird now that I asked if it was weird.

Okay, Grace goes back in time. She lands in a clearing of trees. It’s cold, but there isn’t snow on the ground even though it just snowed the day before. The trees are smaller than she remembers.

Somehow that got turned into the second chapter. After I introduced the Denleys, it took off. Every night when my kids were in bed I’d plop down at my computer or curl up in my bed with my phone, and write for hours. After about four weeks, I had about 3/4 of it done. I had the bulk of a book, 87,000 words, sitting in my computer.

Then I tucked it away. I saved it, put it in a file, and didn’t open it again for a month or two. I didn’t exactly forget about it, but it wasn’t my main focus because I had 3.5 children to focus on.

Sometime in August, I had the thought to send the story to my three best friends. Between the three, there was experience in publishing, avid readers, and all around exceptional women who I knew would be honest. BUT, even knowing they’d be honest, I still wanted the 100% truth.

So I lied.

I wrote them and told them my friend had written a book, and if they’d read it for her, that’d be great. (I know, super lame, but I was brand new to this whole experience). I forgot I sent it to them until one day, my friend Sophie called me. She didn’t tell me she loved it or hated it. She asked where the rest of the book was. And at that moment I realized how much I wanted to write. I wanted to finish this story. Even if only Sophie read to the end, I needed to finish it.

Over the next week I finished the book. And then I tucked it away again for a few months. Occasionally, I’d have some gals in my neighborhood or some family members read it – they thought it was my friend who wrote it. After a few months, I finally told my husband. I was sweating and rambling. It wasn’t pretty. But he was excited for me, and encouraged me to keep going.

I then wrote books two and three. I wanted to tie in a lot of information within the three books, and it’s easier to do that when I have an idea while writing the third and can go back and plant seeds in the first.

To sum up the following year, I had the opportunity to work with a publishing company, and they helped me revise my manuscript. I didn’t realize how bad I was at grammar until I got the suggested changes back. It was frightening. I didn’t even have dialogue tags in my first manuscript! (Wait! Don’t think I’m good at grammar now. I’m not. Don’t look too closely.)

So, after all the changes and revisions, and finally coming clean to my friends that it was actually me who wrote the book, I decided to self publish. I didn’t choose to self publish to get published. I chose to self publish because I wanted my three books in book form so in ten years I can hand them to my teenage girls and say, “Look, Mom did that.”

I didn’t start writing so I could get my books out there to thousands of readers. In fact, the thought of people I know reading my book makes me blush, and a lot of time I will sit on my bathroom floor with the overwhelming feeling to throw up. The very idea of a book signing makes me want to crawl into a hole and hide. I’m actually writing this blog post two days before I publish the first book, and my stomach has been in knots for weeks. I have to create new Facebook and Instagram pages that say AUTHOR on them (palm meets forehead). I still have to tweet my first tweet.

AND I’ve gained 5 pounds.

But that’s all happening right now. Two years ago, I didn’t sit at my computer and write this story so people would know who I am. I sat there and got lost in this story, and actually found pieces of me I didn’t know existed.

So, there’s my story of how these stories started.