Ms. Nitz often compares writing Suspect to constructing the Transcontinental Railroad. After writing the first three chapters, she jumped to the last three chapters. This hopping back and forth continued until the book essentially met in the middle and she drove one last “golden period” into the chapter that linked the manuscript. Different projects require different approaches, of course.

Nitz credits the 1999 Missouri Mentorship Award with noted Children’s author Gary L. Blackwood as being a turning point in her writing life. The year long experience gave her new insights into generating plots and conflict. While she can never pay Mr. Blackwood back, she served as the Missouri Mentor in 2005 in order to pay it forward.

Nitz’s first novel was Defending Irene (Peachtree), the story of a girl playing soccer on an Italian boys’ team. The Horn Book wrote: “Soccer fans, especially girls, will appreciate the well-drawn action and Irene’s feisty spirit.” To make the action off the field as exciting as what happened on it, Ms. Nitz drew heavily on the three years she spent living in Italy.

Her second novel, a middle-grade contemporary fantasy set in Tuscany called Saving the Griffin (Peachtree), was a Children’s Choice nominee in Kentucky and Georgia.

While novels are her favorite literary form to read and write, Ms. Nitz has also sold short stories, articles, and poetry to Highlights for Children, Cricket, Hopscotch, High Fives, and Boys’ Quest. Reprint rights to some of her work have been sold to SIRS and Harcourt Educational Measurement.