In addition to them, as long as I can remember I've had stories floating around in my mind. As soon as I learned how to make letters, I started writing them down. I wrote my first mid-grade novel when I was 12, a 121-page science fiction story about a girl who learns that the new girl in her class is from another planet. During high school and college, I wrote a few short stories that were published in the school papers and literary magazines and a couple of poems that were published in those books you have to pay for. I also wrote 15 young adult novels, none of which made it past first draft. It wasn't that they weren't good enough; I was just too lazy.

 

Then I finished college and real life intruded. I got married, had a couple kids, had to work. Writing took a back seat. I did manage to write two more young adult novels (again, never made it past first draft) and an adult novel which I actually managed to submit to a couple of agents. (Rejected.) In late 2000, things started to change. I was teaching special ed in a very small school in Maine and needed phonics-based stories for my students. Since I couldn't afford to buy any, I decided to write some. The 75 connected short stories I ended up with were published in 2002 as Stories from Somerville, under the name Kimberly Ramsey, by Oxton House Publishers, LLC (www.oxtonhouse.com).

 

I started working more on my writing. I wrote 23 20-page "mininovels" with the characters from Stories from Somerville and tried to write a mid-grade novel about them. (It's still a work in progress.) In spring of 2004, I was fortunate enough to be substituting at my town's elementary school when a local author, Tamra Wight, came in to do a presentation. Afterward, I spoke with her about writing. She gave me her website address, which led me to several writing listservs. I'd gotten out of practice in writing, so I began relearning how to write well.

 

Since then I've had two short stories, "Third Graders Can't Sing" and "Supernuisance", published online as Kimberly Ramsey(www.viatouch.com/Learn/Storystation/Storystation_main.jsp). I reread some of my old young adult novels; two of them, Days of Iced Tea and Dead Carnations and an untitled one that became Cluing In, were good enough to work with. I started work on Days... in October 2004; since then, I've rewritten both of those along with a sequel to Days... and a ten-book series, "Dark Portals." I've done at least one revision on each of the thirteen books and have submitted two, Days... and Bridge, the first "Dark Portals" book. For more info on the books and updates on the submissions, check out my "Other Books" and "Dark Portals" pages.