I became connected with up and coming novelist Kimber Silver when I first got on Twitter a few years back. I was drawn to her as a fellow book lover and I loved her reviews of books she felt passionately about. What I didn’t know about her at the time was her pitch-perfect ear for short-story writing. I could tell from the first piece she shared that she had a real grasp of what made short fiction work. And with every subsequent piece she posted, I knew she had real talent.

I was thrilled when I found out Kimber had written her first novel, which is now with a literary agent. I was fortunate enough to be a test reader for the first chapter and I was very intrigued, and not content with just a sample. I know my Goodreads friends have the same reverence for a good story, otherwise they wouldn’t be connecting with others in cyberspace to share their love for the written word and searching for their next book. And that is why I wanted to share Kimber’s journey from reader to writer, for all of those fellow readers—like me—who feel they could never make the transition from reader to writer. Kimber and I are both proof to the contrary.

It’s my pleasure to introduce Kimber Silver:

I grew up in a small farming community where nothing out of the ordinary happened. We ate meatloaf every Tuesday and rarely met anyone new—not the ideal place for a child with an overactive imagination and energy to burn. I suspect that in the name of self-preservation, my grandmother introduced me to reading early in life; I discovered that a world of possibilities lay between the covers, and I was hooked.

I exercised my fertile imagination via a boy and a black stallion on a beach in a faraway land. In the pages of a novel, I could be best friends with a teenage detective as we solved all manner of crimes together. Stories were my ticket out of Podunk Nowhere, and I never looked back.

My love of reading sparked my journey into writing. I’m never certain where I’m going to find inspiration. Something as small as a random comment made by a friend will send me off to research a new tale. Or perhaps an unusual building glimpsed through the window of a taxi, while exploring a new city, will set my imagination ablaze. Whatever brings an idea to life, I sincerely believe that there is always a little magic involved.