Melanie Conklin: Counting Thyme and an author's process

<p>00:00:00 Molly Rauh<br />Hello and welcome back to this CCIA Literacy Conversations podcast. I'm your host Molly Rauh with my co-host...</p><p>00:00:08 Jessica Rickert<br />...Jessica Rickert. Today's podcast features, Melanie Conklin, Melanie's work centers around writing middle grade novels. Melanie shares about her writing process, inspiration for her stories, and how Nicholas Sparks helped her get started in the publishing world. We are here with Melanie Conklin. Thank you, Melanie, for joining us on our our podcast. Why don't you start by telling us a little bit about your background?</p><p>00:00:36 Melanie Conklin<br />Sure thing. Hi, I'm Melanie. I'm very excited to come and visit Denver in the beginning of 2022. Let's all take a moment to acknowledge how ridiculous it is that it's almost 2022. But my background was in not writing at all. I actually went to design school and studied to be a product designer. Most people don't know what that is. But basically, if you've ever been in Target or Walmart, all that stuff on the shelves that's what a product designer works on. We decide what something looks like and how it works; these kind of consumer products that you have in your home. So if you've ever seen like a giant cupcake birthday cake, it's like a giant cake, and it comes out of a pan. I designed that pan. So you probably have stuff in your house that I designed and worked on. That's a fun talking point. But so I was I was a designer for about 10 years. I quit to stay home with my kids while they were little, and I still liked them. And and I got bored during that time, started writing. And, and five years later, I was an author. So that's how I got here.</p><p>00:01:41 Molly Rauh<br />So I feel like they're have to be more steps from going from writer to authors. Or are there some stories or some pieces there of how you went from? Like I'm writing with my time to I have something published?</p><p>00:01:55 Melanie Conklin<br />Sure. You know, it's interesting because I've been in publ