SHAPLEIGH — At 3 a.m., when most folks who don’t pull a midnight shift are sleeping ”“ or trying to ”“ Brenda Reeves Sturgis is awake, and writing. She’s composing rhymes about loons and wild turkeys and other critters, aimed to delight young children.

“The Lake Where Loon Lives” is her latest children’s book, published by Islandport Press of Yarmouth earlier this year. It is a tale about a mother loon that lives on a lake and protects the chicks that ride on her back, as well as a boy on a dock, and more.

“The Lake Where Loon Lives” is a cumulative book, in that the rhyme builds, line by line, to a crescendo.

“I hear it in my head, like a musician who plays by ear,” said Sturgis of her rhyming ability.

She has been writing for years.

“I always wanted to write,” she said on a recent Saturday. “I filled books and books with poetry when I was in high school.”

From Westbrook High School, Sturgis joined the U.S. Air Force, got married and had three children. At 31, life changed when her husband, who was just 33, died. Sturgis later remarried, and she and her husband, Gary, have a 16-year-old daughter.

Sturgis was inspired to begin writing books when her children were small. She attended a school event with them in 2004 when children’s author Lynn Plourde of Winthrop came in to read. She said she asked Plourde, “How do I do what you do?” And she got an answer.

“She told me to join the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators group, and I did, the next day,” said Sturgis. And then she attended one of their conventions.

Sturgis said she started to write children’s books and joined an online critique group.

“I wrote and wrote and submitted (to publishers) and did absolutely everything wrong,” said Sturgis from the living room of her home overlooking Silver Lake, which is the inspiration for “The Lake Where Loon Lives.”

The experience was discouraging, and Sturgis said she accumulated a number of form rejection letters. Then, she sold a poem to an online magazine, and in 2007, wrote the book “10 Turkeys in the Road,” after watching wild turkeys in the rural roads near the family home.

She submitted “10 Turkeys in the Road” and another book, “Touchdown,” to a contest a couple of years later. “Touchdown” won first place, and “10 Turkeys in the Road” an honorable mention ”“ and garnered the attention of an agent. A trip to a 2008 invitation-only convention called the Rutgers University Council on Children’s Literature brought a consultation with a long-time publisher and editor who read “10 Turkeys in the Road,” and asked her to re-write it with a different theme. It was published by Two Lions publishing house in 2011. Sturgis just signed a contract for “Touchdown,” which will be published as an ebook, online.

“It’s been a long journey,” she said.

After 10 years of trying to write for a living full-time, Sturgis went back to school and now works days as a medical assistant.

She writes at 3 a.m. because that is when she is inspired, she said; sometimes she worries that the ideas may not come ”“ but they do.

“I always wonder if I am going to get another idea ”“ and somehow, it’s just there,” she said. “That is how it works for me.”

When she’s not at her day job, Sturgis reads to children at schools and libraries, and said she is grateful to be able to do so. She read at Shapleigh Memorial Library on July 26, will be reading at Innisfree Bookshop in Meredith, New Hampshire on Saturday; on Swan’s Island Aug. 23 and at the Boston Children’s Museum Sept. 13. Her website is www.brendareevessturgis.com.

And she’s looking forward to her next rhyming adventure.

Writing children literature, putting the words together in rhyme, “is what makes my heart sing,” she said.

— Senior Staff Writer Tammy Wells can be contacted at 324-4444 (local call in Sanford) or 282-1535, ext. 327 or [email protected].