Sharon Thayer

Every story has a beginning, and the Carousel Publishing story began just after September 11, 2001, when serial entrepreneur, Sharon Thayer, watched her current business collapse as surely and quickly as the Twin Towers.

Early the following morning, Sharon woke with a story exploding in her head. Sitting at her desk watching the snow fall gently on the mountains out her window, she wrote words that flowed onto the paper as effortlessly as the snowflakes floating to the earth outside. With a dyslexic history and over 40 years of struggling with reading, Sharon was surprised. She had never dreamed of being an author. But there it was, a magical story, begging to bring joy to little believers and their families.

She spent the next two months visiting childcare centers marketing her story, The Story of Santa's Beard, as a letter from Santa with a snippet of beard folded carefully inside. After busy weeks of sending out Santa letters, Sharon delivered the last batch to the post office two days before Christmas. She had earned enough money to pay her bills and purchase each of her children a small present for under the tree. Little did she know, the greatest gift—the discovery of a new career—was under the tree waiting for her.

A few years later, as the owner of a nature-based childcare center, Sharon found that stories were the perfect place to plant positive messages and words of wisdom for children to discover. In her precious spare time, over the next eight years, she filled a file cabinet drawer with stories.

Taking a risk in 2011, Sharon sold Kid Central to become a full-time author, speaker, publisher, and grandmother. The struggles were ever-present, but nothing that 15-hour days, encouragement from friends and family, and keeping her focus on creating magical stories couldn't surmount.

Now, after selling over 75,000 books and earning 15 states, national, and international awards, Sharon has secured a top literary agent at D4EO Literary Agency. Soon her books will be published in multiple languages for worldwide sales. But it's times when a family shares that their new tradition is reading The Story of Santa's Beard before bed on Christmas Eve that she knows she has indeed succeeded.