"It was a stroke of luck," said the young teacher-librarian, of Werrington.

While she had been a longtime hobby writer Kylie only joined her first writers group in March last year.

"I joined a picture-book writers group at the NSW Writers Centre in Balmain and an editor [Nicola Robinson] came to one of our meetings to critique our work. She read mine and liked it," she said.

"I think it was a matter of right place, right book, right time."

This "right book " was The Prince Who Shrank and it will be published by Koala Books next year.

"They're in the process of finding an illustrator," she said. Kylie graduated from the University of Western Sydney with a Master of Teaching in 2009.

"I'd always wanted to be a writer but it can be a very isolating hobby and you don't know the quality of your writing or what you should change," she said.

"The writers' group gave me the inspiration to write and find out more."

Kylie has since won the 2011 Kathleen Julia Bates Memorial Writing Competition and was named runner-up in the Children's Book Council NSW branch's 2011 Frustrated Writers Mentoring Program. Her pupils at Old Guildford Public School have been given a sneak peak at one of her new works.

"I have a chapter book series called the Adventures of the Cycling Chef which I read to my library monitors who are in year 6," she said.

"I was hoping to get constructive criticism from them but they weren't really helpful in that way, although they didn't mind editing it for spelling. They told me they really felt special to read it. That was really lovely."