After watching a news story on a missing boy who was found alive, Chris Irwin was inspired to write “Nightmare of Shadows,” a fictional children’s book to give children hope and courage through difficult situations.

Irwin, 48, has written about 20 books since her writing career began 15 years ago, and although she has shared her books with local school children since 1996, “Nightmare of Shadows” is her first published children’s book.

The West Chicago resident is a technology assistant at Geneva’s Mill Creek Elementary School. She gives credit to her late daughter for the start of her career.

Q How did your writing career begin?

Sometimes you do things because you have to. Famous author Diane Redmond would read to the kids who were extremely sick and she came and read to my daughter. My daughter said my mom writes. I was extremely embarrassed that she asked Diane to read this very badly written story, but she was very kind and she was very helpful because she gave me all this information, a manuscript of how to lay it out and how to send it to the publishers with an illustration. She just inspired me to continue to write. I think it’s been a work in progress since then. I thought I would have stopped writing when we left the hospital but I was inspired to continue. I kept all the stuff I wrote for her (her daughter) and continued to work on it. So now I have a library of books I wrote for her. I’ve continued to write since then.

Q What inspired you to turn the news story into a children’s book? Where did the idea come from?
A There was a TV news report about a boy that had been kidnapped. He was kidnapped for a couple of weeks when they found him. He was found with another boy who had been kidnapped for about five years. I was absolutely horrified about the story and it just stirred up deep images and I just started writing. I wanted to show kids that although they can have a horrific time, they can actually get through it.

Q  How was your experience writing the book?
A It was difficult to write. It took me a quite long time. It took me about nine months to write it and I felt good at the end.

Q: How challenging was the process to turn the news story into a fictional children’s book?
A: I’m not sure that it was particularly difficult. It just poured out of me. The hardest part was just keeping up with my emotions as I was writing. And afterwards putting it into order because when I first wrote it I just wrote whatever was coming out of me at the time. I actually had to go back and put it in order and that was the hardest part to actually getting it into a timeline. When I first wrote it there was no time to it. I was just writing what I was feeling at the time. So putting it into a timeline was the most difficult thing for me.

Q: What did you enjoy most about writing this book?
A: I just love to write. Anytime I’m inspired I have to write and I was totally inspired to write this story.