EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of a series of Saturday profiles of area residents and their stories. To suggest a profile, contact features editor Burton Cole at bcole@tribtoday. com.

AUSTINTOWN — Local author Nancy Christie has always loved reading and making up stories but never expected to become a published writer.

“I don’t know that I ever made a conscious decision that I was going to be a writer,” said Christie, 66, who grew up on the West Side of Youngstown and went to Holy Name School, graduating from Ursuline High School in 1972. She now lives in Austintown.

“I never thought about being published. I never, ever thought about being an author.”

Growing up, Christie was a reader. She didn’t watch television a lot, but she did spend a lot of time reading and playing make-believe. As she got older, Christie began to write short stories.

“I didn’t have a role model who even made me think this could happen. It was just, you have this idea and you had to get it out, you had to get it down and then once it was finished, move on to the next one. It was just not anything I thought could ever happen.

“That was something that happened to people who lived in New York or people who lived in literary communities, never people who live in Youngstown, Ohio,” Christie said. “The very first short story I had published was in 1994 … I just sort of fell into it, I mean it was, it was very odd.”

Christie had worked for business and weekly publications, and said now, as a published author, she feels strange being on the other side of the interview.

“When my first book came out and I realized, oh my God, I’m in a sense, on the other side of the microphone, and I don’t think I like being here. The first book was very scary, because I just was not at all prepared to be the person answering questions. I’m much better at controlling the conversation,” Christie said.

Christie uses her reporting background to help her write her stories.

“Sometimes you would hear something in the conversation that for some reason kind of stuck in your mind. And then it would just take you in a different direction into a story, and into something fictional … those are the golden minutes, the golden opportunities and you don’t want to ignore those because those are like the seeds and if you just ignore them then, then they’ll just dry up and do nothing,” Christie said.

“I think doing all those interviews also helped me with dialogue … I think, in an odd kind of way, it was good training for me to try to pick up on something beyond just the words. There’s always something behind the words that people are telling you, and you know that’s what you want to do when you’re writing the story is not just what they are saying, it’s what they are not saying.”

Christie’s new book “Peripheral Visions and Other Stories” is now available to purchase. This is a collection of short stories about hope and choice. The characters are dealt a bad hand or put in a situation where they have to figure out how to make it work — so they can get to that goal that they see in their peripheral vision.

“I like to say that “Peripheral Vision” is basically a collection about hoping that things will get better, if I can just hang on long enough. If I can just keep it in my head, where I want to end up, even if it takes me longer than I would like to get there. It’ll happen, keep trying, that’s basically what it comes down to. OK, not a perfect life right now (but) I know I can see in my peripheral vision where I want to end up so I’ll just keep hanging in there I’ll just keep working at it one step at a time,” said Christie.

Christie has her other published works on her website www.nancychristie.com and has a novel that is being workshopped and is working on another collection of short stories called “Doors and Windows.”

“That’s basically all I do, I write. I’m in my office by 4:30, 5 o’clock in the morning and I hang out here ’til probably 5 or 6 o’clock, seven days a week. It’s what I do, I’m a writer,” she said.