If you grew up playing with vintage Barbie® dolls or are a collector, you might be familiar with the Random House Barbie® books from the early 1960s. Some of these books were novels while others were compilations of short stories. (There was even a Barbie cookbook which is hard to find!) With titles like Barbie Solves a Mystery, Barbie’s New York Summer, and my personal favorites, Barbie and Ken, and Barbie, Ken, and Midge, these were mostly focused on lighthearted situations. In one book, a high school classmate tries too hard to emulate Barbie’s style and even flirts with Ken, but to no avail. In another, Midge brags about being an expert camper–and brought bottles of soda pop instead of a water canteen and flimsy shoes that couldn’t withstand daily hikes. Barbie always came off as a wise woman despite her teenage years, and she deftly and consistently acted like a mother to Midge, Skipper, and friends who existed only on the pages of the books.

The stories I write are intended to pay homage to those most enjoyable books. They might be lighthearted, like the Barbie stories, but some are not. Most of my stories are geared toward a young adult or adult audience, and they may contain adult situations or occasional coarse language. I have a rating system and I am including a rationale for the rating so readers can determine for themselves whether a story is acceptable for young collectors.

Many of my stories are grounded in the official, Tonner/Wilde Imagination canon. I am gleaning the canon from poem cards and articles about Ellowyne in doll magazines. Unfortunately, the original canon is no longer available online, so I’m relying on my memory. Yeah, I forget why I went into a room, but I do recall many details of the official canon. At any rate, my stories may start with the canon but end up in a wild(e) direction that deviates from that canon. I am also creating biographies of the characters aka the cast of characters that will compare the official canon and the canon I’ve built in my head, called the headcanon in fan fiction circles. And, as per the Random House Barbie books, there will be some characters who are not realized into doll form but exist only in my stories. Examples include Penn’s nursing school classmates, Rufus’ parents, Prudence’s rugby team (Go She-Devils!), and Marisol, the Stanhope family’s cook, who puts up with every culinary whim Amber can express.

Oh, one more thing. I have been asked to include more pictures in my stories. Right now I don’t have a good space to photograph my dolls but that’s going to change later this year. I’m going to try to manipulate WordPress to allow for photos in some of the space to the sides of the stories.

I hope you will enjoy reading my stories as much as I do writing them. Please share with your friends. Thank you for reading and, as always, gentle hugs.