Meet the Team Tuesday: Jim

Today is my first "meet the team" post. To kick it off, I can think of nobody more important to my writing process than this man: my Daddy. Yes, I still call him "daddy." Really, what girl doesn't? Anyway, without his inspiring me and challenging me to write an entire novel, none of my books would ever have been written. I still find it difficult to motivate myself to write anything he isn't reading.

Much of my love for the written word comes from the memories of my dad reading to us kids every night before bed all through growing up. From "A Wrinkle in Time" to "The Lord of the Rings" to "Lad of Sunnybank" to "The Chronicles of Narnia" to "Choose Your Own Adventure" to "Swiss Family Robinson" we read so many books together as a family. When we were younger, we would beg him to make up his own stories every now and then, and I assure you, a lot of my creativity came straight from him! When I began writing my book, he told me he needed 10 pages a night, and would read them out loud to the family each evening. Those are some of my most treasured memories.

In addition to inspiring me, challenging me to write, giving me ideas along the way, sending me numerous encouraging emails and letters, and being one of my first readers for just about everything I write... he is also my Editor in Chief. He helps me with the content-editing part of the revising process. I send him the finished product and he reads through the entire book, notes any place where I've over-described anything, used the same word too often, or just need to change some of the words, and makes comments throughout. Sometimes he just highlights a portion and says, "I love this," which is always nice to hear/read, too. :)