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Books have always been my great love. Now you´re probably picturing me at a romantic candlelight dinner for two with a Patricia Briggs novel on the opposite side of the table while I gaze at it adoringly. (Go on, laugh, but it´s not as far from the truth as it might be with some people.) Ever since I learned to read (I was four - the book was Bambi), I had some idea that I wanted to write my own stories. I wanted to share them with people.

When I was in first grade, we had Career Day at school. We got to pick what we wanted to do for a living from cards with job descriptions on them. I chose "freelance writer" because there was no card for "person who writes stories for a living". My teacher (Mrs. Johnson, I will so call you out now) said, rather condescendingly, "That's not a real job, honey. Why don't you pick something else?" That should've prepared me for the row I had to hoe.

I never did pick anything else.

When I was ten, I read all of the Tolkien books (but not the Simarillion), so I immediately began writing my own epic fantasy. It had a mighty young warrior, a foulmouthed dwarf, and a mysterious maiden (the love interest!) who could turn into mist after dark. Sadly, this incipient work of incredible genius (written in my Garfield notebook) fell victim to parental censorship (I blame the dwarf for cussing so much).

In tenth grade, I wrote my first novel, 150 pages on an old typewriter: small-town girl meets a mysterious boy who works as the Winnie the Pooh mascot at Sears. Despite having led a boring life heretofore, our heroine saves the boy (who was on the run from the mob) numerous times. Even then, I had no sense of what was "proper" behavior for a heroine.

So if you count that novella, written when I was ten, it took me twenty-six years to scale this mountain. Is it any wonder that I get teary each time I receive cover art, or that I choke up when I discover one of my idols has actually read one of my books--and liked it? Sometimes I still can´t believe my good fortune, and I bless my glorious agent and editors for making a kid´s dream come true, a kid who never loved anything more than books. (In case you tuned in late, that kid is me, a kid whose teacher told her to pick a real job. Take that, Mrs. Johnson!)

That's the moral of this story, you know. You can do it too, if you never give up.

Ann Aguirre, Blue Diablo, fantasy, Penguin Books