I can’t remember the last time I left the house without a spiral notebook or some pages folded up in a back pocket. And I don’t think I've ever returned without fresh ideas, titles, or poetry fragments climbing every one of those pages, racing up the margins, crisscrossing in as many different directions as the highways and interstates on a road map of Missouri (my home state).

I’ve spent my life making these notes in the margins—even as a little girl, my favorite summer activity was to write books bound by strips of red ribbon…and to scrawl comments next to my paragraphs like the most critical of editors. (Lessons learned from this childhood pastime served me well, even in graduate school, as I attempted my first novel.)

After college? I kept scribbling as I taught piano and guitar lessons to pay the bills, this time jotting character sketches, mannerisms, phrases all inspired by my students. It soon became clear to me that I wanted to write for the children and teens who filled my home with music.

Even now, as I delight in spreading the news of my publications, I recognize that the steadiest constant in my life has been those illegible margin notes. That blissful inch of space where novels are born and revision plans are hatched, where titles are brainstormed and closing sentences are finalized.

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