Mary Jean Kelso is a journalist and a multi-genre author of adult, young adult, and children's books. In this interview she talks about her latest picture books, illustrated by renowned Oregon artist K.C. Snider.

Thanks for joining us today, Mary Jean. Do you consider yourself to be a born writer?

Yes. From the time I was able to pick up a piece of paper and a pencil. I spent a lot of years not knowing that was the direction I was going so I trained as an administrative assistant and fortunately became a very fast typist!

Tell us about your recent release. What was your inspiration for it?

The Christmas Angel was a piece I made into "mini" books about 1 inch by 3 inches and totally "hand made." I did it because kids were wanting to buy books when I did a signing and the parents didn't want to spend $6.95 for a book. So, I sold "mini" books for $1 just so the kids could get them. Then I found, since it was Christmas time, adults were buying 24 at a time. They wanted to include them in their Christmas cards. So, I knew the story was a hit.
Tell us about your children's books.

K.C. Snider illustrated the first, The Christmas Angel. She is also illustrating the sequel (One Family's Christmas) and the Andy and the Albino Horse series. We are both very excited about our work with Guardian Angel Publishing.

Have you ever suffered from writer's block? If yes, how did you "cure" it?

Yes! How I cured it was to stop listening to all the people that were telling me "how" to write. I was looking at hard and fast rules I was afraid to break and until I became honest and wrote what I wanted to the way I wanted to write it I wasted a lot of time worrying if I was doing it right.