Hi, my name is Josephine Strand and I recently published my debut novel Misty Dreams. My fascination with books began very early in life. When I was little my parents barely had money for schoolbooks, let alone storybooks. My town didn’t have a public library and bookstores were only for the rich (but that’s a whole other story to tell later). When I started attending elementary school and was introduced to the school library, a whole new and exciting world opened up to me. I devoured everything, from fairy tales to children’s classics, to picture books.

The first fiction I wrote was at age eight or nine, a fantasy short story on how fictional characters came to life in the school library when the clock struck midnight. As a teenager, I would invent stories in my head and test them out on my best friend. How grateful I am to her for humoring me all those years and feeding my hunger for creativity! One of the things my childhood friends remember about me is how I always said I would write a book one day. It took a while but I finally made them-and myself-proud!