From the independent producer project of KCRW, this is Here Be Monsters. My first grade teacher let me sit in the back of the room while she read aloud to the rest of the class.

I'd write stories back there. I wrote my

stories on brightly colored construction paper with crayon and pencil. They revolved

around little girls playing with foxes.

I remember drinking in my teacher's praises once reading time was over.

She would say things like, such imagination, you're so talented and after school my parents would read my

story booklets and beam at me you are such a great writer so smart six years old and I already knew I was destined.

I remember when my family bought our first desktop computer in 1999, a beige compact with a monitor the size of a toaster oven.

I begged my mom for one of her floppy disks, insisting that I needed to start my writing career.

She gave me a purple one and I started work on my masterpieces.

By that point I moved on from Foxes. Now my stories were

fabricated diaries set in the American frontier. They were rife with the kinds of

misunderstandings that only a nine-year-old could be forgiven for.

And all the while my parents doubted on me.

Bethany's a little writer.

She'll publish her first book before she's 20.

To make matters worse, I believed I had a natural knack for voices and accents.

And as a result, I joined the local children's theater.

In third grade, during the production of I joined the local children's theater.

In third grade, during the production of a gingerbread Christmas,

Tyler McRae was cast for the lead unisex gingerbread child instead of me.

I met with the music teacher after class and angry tears and I demanded the part.

...