With Halloween fast approaching, three of Paula's short stories have been published in two Halloween themed anthologies for children.

Paula recently presented a copy of each book - entitled Spooktacular Stories: Thrilling Tales for Brave Kids and Creative Kids Tales 2: 'Enchanted' and 'Things That Go Bump', a flip book - to Scone Library.

The anthologies feature of a variety of Australian author's short stories and poems and for every copy sold of Spooktacular Stories - which is a Share Your Story anthology - another will be donated to sick kids in hospitals all around Australia.

The book was launched at Brisbane Children's Hospital on Thursday, with authors and illustrators dressed up in costume to read from the anthology, sing and do craft activities with the kids.

With six grandchildren herself, Paula said it was only natural to begin writing for children after more than 20 years of writing for adults.

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"I did a course on writing picture books about seven years ago and started writing for young children, but it was a bit of a hard market to get into," she admitted.

Despite this, early childhood reading is a growing industry with children's book sales remaining stable in a generally flat market.

"It's interesting... with everything else that's happening, kids are still entranced by picture books," Paula said.

"Even though there's quite a few companies that have disappeared from the market there's still small ones that are starting up."

It's from one of those small publishers that Paula recently received a contract for her very first picture book.

"There's a great small publishing company that set up a few years ago in Armidale, NSW, called Little Pink Dog Books run by Kathy and Peter Creamer," she said.

"Their motivation is to provide opportunities for aspiring children's book writers and aspiring illustrators and they've taken me on board.

"I've presented my manuscript and they've set me up with an illustrator, so it's all in the production phase."

While the book is well over a year away from being launched, Paula did reveal it had a rural theme and is about a farm dog.

Upper Hunter Shire Library coordinator Elizabeth Walter was grateful for Paula's donation of the children's anthologies.

"We are grateful to our writers, especially local, and we try to promote our local talent as much as we can so that people can come in, see them, and continue to support them," she said.