I guess you could say I was born a dreamer. I read that even babies dream, so perhaps my dreams to write stories began way back then. Who knows? But stories became real to me when people began to read to me from books. And even more when my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Coalbucket (real name, not kidding), taught me to read. Since then, I have devoured books. After my mother died, in her special box of treasures, I found a story I had written in the fourth grade, written in cursive, in pencil. In high school English classes, when given assignments to write stories and read them aloud, other students would sidle up next to me to ask, “What happened next?” The dream to write horse books for girls took up part of my heart. Skip ahead to a bunch of years being married, raising children, farming, and living in reality, including writing letters, articles for church newsletters, and poems—writing I took for granted. All those experiences led to attending a writers conference at Warner Pacific College in Portland, Oregon, when my three children were teenagers. Inspired by the conference, I stepped into a new world with definite dreams of…