By Jeremy A. Corley

Managing Editor

"I did not intend to be an author," said Debbie Reece recently after picking up her son from school.

Shortly after Thanksgiving last year, the Howe resident asked her Wee School students in Van Alstyne about Christmas decorations for their classroom.

"What are we going to use to decorate the room for Christmas?" she asked.

"Pumpkins!" they replied.

After considering the idea, it occurred to Reece that her son, Matthew, had a habit each year of picking out a green pumpkin from the pumpkin patch.

That turned out to be the spark she needed for her first children's book, "The Christmas Pumpkin", the story of how a green pumpkin, overlooked in favor of his orange brethren during the fall pumpkin season, becomes a popular Christmas decoration with the blessing of Santa himself.

"I wrote the story in the classroom that afternoon," she said. "The story was just so cute, I wanted to share it with people. Then I thought maybe I should try to publish it."

Reece met with a publisher in Dallas, but she decided she didn't want to deal with his timetable.

Her husband, Eddie, put her in touch with an illustrator in Van Alstyne, Ron Head.

Head was able to illustrate the book and to put its page design into electronic format.

Reece did some digging into what it would take to self-publish the book, and BeeBop Books was created.

"The next thing you know, I had 1,500 books to sell on June 14," she said.

She took some with her for a six-week summer visit with her family in Maryland, which later included stops in Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Georgia.

When she returned to Texas, she immediately started doing visits and readings at local and area libraries, Wee School classes and elementary schools.

She has ordered her second printing of the book, which has sold about 2,500 copies so far.

Each time she has visited a school, library, church or learning center, she has donated $1 for each book sold back to the institution.

"There is still so much I need to learn, but it's been very educational," Reece said. "You're never too old to learn something new. It's just taken me in all different directions -- it's a roller coaster."

Reece's track record includes a variety of jobs and interests, from Baltimore Colts cheerleader as a teenager to several years as a computer network technician for the federal government. She also has worked for several school districts and once owned a karaoke company.

These days she serves as a substitute teacher in Van Alstyne and Howe and works part time at Kohl's when she's not making book-related appearances and doing normal mom activities with Matthew.

Even with her full schedule, she has more plans, including an ornament and an audio recording of "The Christmas Pumpkin". She said she would love to see the story as a children's play.

Reece said she has another book in mind as well, and Head already has agreed to work with her again.

She said that while her creative side was always present through the years, she never thought it would manifest itself in a book and her own publishing company.

"I always had these little outlets of creativity, but I never, never thought I'd be an author," she said. "The most rewarding thing to me has been reading the book at the schools and discussing the process with the older students.

"I'm just a mom that decided to figure out how to do this."

For more information about "The Christmas Pumpkin" or BeeBop Books, visit www.beebopbooks.com.