I would like to tell you a story—probably a good thing for an author to do, right? This is the story of a girl who never had any interest in being an author. She wanted to write astrophysics modeling software. She wanted to show the world that women could excel in STEM. She wanted to take on the world.

Then, her daughter died.

Suddenly, that world she wanted to take on had turned dark and cold. She took job after job moving from one menial task to the next. For years, she withered, but she existed. She tried shrinks and pills but ended up isolating herself, staying insulated from the hurt the world could cause. Hope became a distant memory. Joy slept beneath pain. Happiness eroded behind apathy.

One day a voice whispered to her, a boy who had his own pain. It sounded so much like her own that she scribbled his words onto a piece of paper. And then more. And more after that. She figured out that helping him with his pain somehow lessened hers. So she wrote another book. And another.

At first, she just tossed them up onto the Internet for the world to see. Incredibly, people liked what they read and she ended up signing a six-book contract with a small but growing independent publisher. That was nearly a decade ago.

And now – here I am. Dreamspinner Press took that scared little girl, terrified of her own mind, and gave her a safe place to let it out. They opened the doors to books like Aaron and A Heart for Robbie and let other people see their own pain and know that maybe they could be okay too—just like Aaron, just like Brian and Jamie. It gave them hope.

In a month, I will graduate Summa Cum Laude with a BA in Creative Writing. I recently married a wonderful man. I see the sun shining down on me every day. I am happy, healthy and whole and Dreamspinner Press had everything to do with that. They gave me some of the best friends I’ve ever had and introduced me to some of the best people I know. They stand by me no matter what insanity I decide to write next. They are my family.

And I will always be a Dreamspinner girl.