Melinda Joy

My name is Melinda Joy. I grew up in a small suburban home in the San Francisco Bay Area. My mother provided us with sticks for wands, leaves for currency and a gigantic backyard to explore, imagine and create in. Like my daughter today, I spent most of my days as a girl creating and imagining that I was in all sorts of impossible worlds. Beautiful, wonderful, magical worlds.

Now I am home with my two children who fill my world with as much mischief and joy as they can manage. My time is spent taking care of, creating and imagining with them, all while trying to balance my other responsibilities, my love for beauty--in all of it's various forms--and my life as an aspiring writer.

I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was a little girl. My life was a complete daydream from the moment I woke up to the moment I fell asleep. Blankets became aprons, knots in trees became keyholes, animals all had names and stories and families to get home to at night, secret gardens really existed, shadows at night were life threatening and pirates lived next door. I filled up notebooks with my imaginings. My stories became my escape and my playground. The beauty of the world and the goodness of others filled my pages and taught me how to believe in the power of imagination.

Capturing beauty through words is what inspires me as a writer. Life is beautiful. This one truth lies at the core of all of my stories and in all of my undertakings. It is how I define myself as a person and how I hope to define myself as a writer. I hope you will enjoy reading along.

Blog: http://melindajoywrites.blogspot.com

bullies    courage    fiction    honor    juvenile    middle grade    short stories