Many have dreamed of picking up, moving out and following their passion. For most, that’s exactly what it is – a dream.

Children’s book author Meg Fleming, however, hit the ground running, with a husband and three children in tow, to Pleasanton, California.

The former Fox River Grove resident taught in Elmhurst for two years before becoming a stay-at-home mom. Fleming has a background in voice that she said unknowingly led her down the writing path.

“I never realized how much I loved words,” Fleming said. “As a singer, you pay attention to lyrics and words quite a bit. When I had kids, I had to stop performing because that happened in the evening. I don’t think I even noticed it happening, but when I stopped going to rehearsals, I just started writing more.

“If you’re in the arts, you’re drawing from the same well. I don’t see a line between a writer and a singer. A picture book has a unique opportunity to open and close a curtain every time you turn a page. I see a picture book as a performance with 32 scenes.”

Fleming originally started outside the children’s literature genre but found her way to it through her own children.

“I started out writing slices of life humor but realized more and more in reading so much to my kids, I fall into and relate to a children’s voice,” Fleming said. “It’s an easy, comfortable place for me. I was a music teacher and taught drama. I find children really relatable, and they’re a great audience. Their imaginations are so intense.”

Fleming started focusing specifically on children’s books in 2005 and sold her first book, “I Heart You,” in 2012. Beach Lane Books published the book in 2016 with illustrations by Sarah Jane Wright. Her next book, “Ready, Set, Build!,” published by Little Bee Books and Bonnier will be released April 4. “Sometimes Rain,” featuring Chicago illustrator Diane Sudyka, and “Ready, Set, Sail!” are scheduled for a spring 2018 release.

“ ‘I Heart You’ came out of me being so overwhelmed with love for my kids,” Fleming said. “I was working on another manuscript, and my mentor had me pull the verbs out.

“I started playing with them and moving them around. It was sort of a challenge for myself. I wanted to see if I could say ‘I love you’ without saying, ‘I love you.’ It uses all verbs and actions that show love. Love is an abstract thing, and I wanted to concretely show how you love. It turned into a story itself. It was truly born out of writing.”

Though an already established KidLit writer in the Chicago area, Fleming and her husband, Kevin Lentz, both were looking for something more, on the other side of the Mississippi.

“We had lived here all of our lives, and we were at a point where we wanted to go after life and expose our kids to something different,” Fleming said. “We wanted to create a living metaphor for them and show them you can pick up and go somewhere else and be totally fine.”

Fleming remembers leaving Illinois three years ago June 30. That same night there were six tornadoes, and the Mississippi River flooded.

“It was a good lesson for our family. It was good for our kids to see that you can persevere and chase after what it is you want to shake out of life,” Fleming said.

Fleming and her family left their 2-acre home in Fox River Grove and settled outside of San Francisco in a more modest home.

“We’re willing to focus on the dream instead of the size of the house or the backyard,” Fleming said. “I’m not going to say it was easy. For me in the end, it’s about getting to know the people, and it’s more about being around people that are real and interesting and artistic. The children’s literature community is pretty happening out there [San Francisco].”

Although she loves her new community in California she has enjoyed for the past three years, Fleming admits the people is one of the things she misses most about Fox River Grove.

“I miss the people, my family, my friends and their kids,” Fleming said. “And I do love the seasons. There’s something about a start and a finish that happens four times a year that is so clear. While I don’t miss the snow, I do miss the first snow. ‘Sometimes Rain’ is really my love letter to the seasons.”

Fleming recently returned to the area for a series of appearances and readings, including at the Algonquin Road Elementary School, where she taught extra-curricular choir, Magic Tree Bookstore in Oak Park and Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville. She also visited her alma mater, Naperville High School, where she was given the Learners to Leaders Award, an alumni award for literature.

Fleming is working on a handful of manuscripts and has a novel in the works she says slowly is making its way into her computer. No matter the project, Fleming believes in the honesty and openness of a voice.

“Don’t censor yourself. Write what comes out and worry about editing later,” Fleming said. “Be as free and as loose as possible. There’s no reason to question what you have to say and how you’re saying it. And find a community that is supportive to your craft, not competitive.”