Ruth Ballard is a professor of biological sciences at Sacramento State, a forensic DNA legal consultant, and – as her alter ego Ruthy Ballard – a children’s book author

Her first book, Mateo and the Gift of Presence ($12.95, Spinning Wheel Press), is a science-fiction adventure story for ages 9 to 12. It recently received a Benjamin Franklin Gold Award from the Independent Book Publishers Association.

Ruth Ballard stepped out of her role as professor of biological sciences to write a children's science-fiction adventure. (Photo courtesy of Ruth Ballard)

Ballard’s inspiration was the friend who confided that she wanted to write a book about her sometimes-difficult son. The friend wanted the first sentence to be: “There once was a boy named Mateo, who lived in a fine house by the sea.”

“I thought there was something very special about Mateo that his parents weren’t seeing,” Ballard says, “so I decided I would write the first chapter and send it to (his mother), and then she could write the second chapter, and we would go back and forth.

“When I got to the end of the first chapter, I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to write the second one, because I know what it should say.’ Two weeks later, I had 26 chapters, and the book was finished.”

However, it would take Ballard three years to edit the 220-page Mateo and the Gift of Presence, because she was busy writing the second, third, and fourth installments in her newfound Tales by Moons-Light Series. She’s now working on the fifth book.

The real Mateo is not the boy in Mateo and the Gift of Presence, but rather a character Ballard spun out of her impressions of him.

“In the book, Mateo is sent to his room after being disciplined by his parents for not being motivated,” she says. “He notices a crack in the ceiling, and he disappears through the crack and goes across the galaxy to a planet that has two moons. Meanwhile, his parents think he’s been abducted, so there’s this backstory with the police investigation and forensic DNA. Readers know that he’s really on this other planet having a marvelous adventure.”

Mateo and the Gift of Presence was Ruth Ballard's first book. (Cover image courtesy of Ruth Ballard)

Along the way, Mateo encounters a spirit guide, called an “uppy,” who sees something in him that his parents didn’t: his gift of imagination.

“But imagination has a downside if he doesn’t learn to harness it,” Ballard says. “If the uppy can’t come out of his head and into the real world, he won’t be able to build a future of his own choosing, live an authentic life, and come out from under his parents’ shadow.”

Ballard will publish her second book, Elvia and the Gift of Feeling Deeply, in October.  Like its predecessor, the plot includes DNA forensics.

Even as she was raising her sons Loren and Peter (both now in their 30s), Ballard never considered writing for children.   

“I did make up bedtime stories for them, but this creativity really came out of the blue,” she says. “There’s something here that I’m not understanding, some kind of magic that I didn’t even know was there.”

Ballard, whose childhood nickname was “Ruthy,” was reared by musician parents, who moved the family to and from the Midwest, the Deep South, and England. She was 15 when her father accepted a job directing the San Francisco Boys Chorus. She has lived in California since.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from Sacramento State in 1991 and returned as an assistant professor after earning graduate degrees in genetics from UC Davis. Ballard is the founding director of Sac State’s CSI-TRU (Crime Scene Investigation Training and Research for Undergraduates) program and is the founder/president of a DNA expert-witness corporation. Small Press United is the national distributor of books published by her Spinning Wheel Press.

Original fairy-tales and other original writing by Ballard can be found on her blog.

“I’m going into classrooms, teaching kids about my profession and about science in general,” she says. “My books are science-rich, and I want them to get excited about science and reading at the same time.” – Dixie Reid