I took my time deciding what it was I wanted to be when I grew up because it wasn't just a passing flight of fancy for me, it was an honest-to-god career decision. The first thing I knew was that I could never be a doctor or veterinarian, because I was too emotionally sensitive to handle the death of a patient. (As a result, I considered "playing doctor" and books about horses a complete and utter waste of my childhood.)

I dabbled in acting at North Springs Elementary school-thanks to our amazing music teacher with an amazing vision, Linda Hall. I had my first part in a major production when I was six-going-on-seven. I played Marcie in "We're all Stars, Charlie Brown," and I sang a duet with Pig Pen. Acting was fun. A bit scary…but fun. That was certainly a possibility.

At the ripe old age of eight, I was assigned to write a poem for my 4th grade ALERT unit. It was an octet in almost perfect rhyming verse entitled "Friendship." I looked at the lines in my notebook, scrawled in my young, round hand, and the world just clicked. I KNEW that I wanted to be a writer.

I wrote and wrote and wrote…stories, poems, greeting cards, pamphlets on why you shouldn't do drugs…all kinds of stuff. Anything. Everywhere. I read every book I could get my hands on. But I only ever did passably well in English. I never placed in the story competitions in school. I never got into Governor's School for the Arts.

Ironically enough, my brand of crap was still constantly sought after by friends and family. So I kept on writing for their amusement…and mine.

I was approached after a performance of "Showboat" at a local community theatre by someone from South Carolina Educational Television. They wanted me to come in and read for a part…which I did…and I was hired to star in a local PBS miniseries called "Pass it Along" (that I suspect might still play on closed-circuit educational television to this day).

So, I told my parents, if the writing thing didn't pan out, I could always be an actress.

They were speechless.

Writing and acting were not careers, they said. They were hobbies.

At which point I informed them that I wanted to be a professional hobbyist.

It did not go over well.

Since I wasn't allowed to do what I wanted with my life, I decided to do what I was good at. (Trouble was, I was good at a lot of things.) So I took my time having a blast with my friends in high school, spent as little time as possible in college, and graduated with a degree in Chemistry.

Right after that, my father called in a favor to a friend who worked at South Carolina Electric and Gas and I went one afternoon to look at their labs. I took one step into the clean, white-walled rooms full of neat people in white lab coats and thought: I wonder how long it would take before I snuck in at night and painted the walls rainbow colors…

I went out the next day and got a job at the bookstore in the mall.

I've had other kinds of jobs over the past ten years - many of them at the same time - but I've never strayed too far from books. I followed my parents to Tennessee and got a job at the Smyrna Public Library. And right before I drained my savings account dry as a result of living for a year and a half below the poverty level, I lucked out and got a job as a buyer at Ingram Book Company. I still did copyediting, book reviews and interviews - anything I could get my hands on. I kept writing, because I loved it.

As a hobby, of course.

There are two checks framed in my library at home. One was the check I received when I was eight for my work on "Pass it Along." The second I received eighteen years later from Candlewick Press — the first half of the advance for my picture book AlphaOops: The Day Z Went First. I think my degree is at the bottom of a box in the attic. I take a perverse sort of pleasure in the fact that I never earned a dime as a scientist.

The interesting side to my lack of formal education in the arts is that I have no concept of boundaries. Nothing is impossible. Anything goes. I don't just think outside the box, I sit outside the box and use it as an ashtray. I want to do everything.

And I'm working on it.

What is on the horizon for me? Well, I might care if I were interested in the horizon.

My happiness lies in finding out what's beyond it.