BREMERTON — When Bremerton native Stephanie Rohrbaugh was 5, she already knew what she wanted to be when she grew up.

“I wanted to have a career in writing,” she said. “Ever since I could read, I wanted to do that.”

Now, Rohrbaugh is achieving her dream.

Rohrbaugh recently entered a short story writing competition held by Neoglyphic Entertainment, a “storytelling company built for the digital age,” according to their press release. Neoglyphic opened the competition to writers throughout the United States and Canada, asking for short stories. The 20 winners would have their stories published in the anthology book “Threads: A NeoVerse Anthology,” which features stories ranging from science fiction to historical fiction to horror.

One such story, a blend of sci-fi and fantasy, is “The Magical Worlds of Theodore Erickson: A New Beginning,” by S.A. Rohrbaugh.

Rohrbaugh said when she told her family and friends she was going to try to find writing competitions to get her work published and garner some name recognition, her mother found a post from someone else on Facebook mentioning Neoglyphic’s contest.

“I looked into it and it turns out there was no fee to enter the contest,” Rohrbaugh said. “They accepted all genres. They wanted something interesting, which meant that my fantasy stuff and my sci-fi stuff and my horror stuff might potentially be applicable.”

Out of more than 4,000 entries in the competition, Rohrbaugh’s short story was one of those chosen to be published. According to Neoglyphic’s press release, entrants were judged by a series of peer readers, publishing industry experts and machine learning technology. The winning stories were strong in technique, storytelling and premise.

“I’m really pleasantly surprised to be included amongst everyone,” she said.

Rohrbaugh’s entry is a sci-fi/fantasy short story about a family making a new start near Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. A couple of kids witness a hippopotamus walking out of the ocean and engaging in a conversation with a man, who eventually ends up showing the children a parallel world.

“It’s a little bit of fantasy, and a little bit of sci-fi that incorporates the multiverse,” Rohrbaugh explained.

One of the biggest challenges she faced in this competition was how concise the entry needed to be.

With the exception of her short story she wrote specifically for the competition, her shortest piece is about 70,000 words long (which translates to about 280 pages, using the standard 250 words-per-page calculation).

“The initial short story itself was a challenge,” Rohrbaugh said. “In some ways, it’s easier to write the big, long thing. It’s fun to give yourself the challenge of, ‘Okay, I’m not going to take 120,000 words to expand this idea. How can I do this in the simplest way that is the most entertaining?’ Those are, at least for me, more difficult.

“I think if you like writing, it’s just fun to experience writing in all of its forms. If somebody can pay you for it or publish it or put it out there, sometimes the reward isn’t even the money,” Rohrbaugh added. “It’s the, ‘Oh, people are going to be able to read this. I did a thing, I did a thing!’”

Rohrbaugh grew up in Kitsap County. She attended Brownsville Elementary, Ridgetop Middle School and Olympic High School before moving to Eastern Washington to attend Washington State University. Her extended family still lives in Bremerton, she said, and she returns often to visit often.

“You grow up thinking, this is what I want to do, and I think when you’re an adult you think, ‘That’s not really going to happen,’ “ Rohrbaugh said. “It’s really great to have the opportunity to further things for myself and to just have fun doing it, and being able to do it is best.

“I will write forever, whether I move along or not in the process in the career,” she said. “I will write forever because I have to. I need to do this for my sanity, (but) it’s great to have other people read it and to develop an audience.”

Learn more about Stephanie Rohrbaugh on her website at sarohrbaugh.com. You can purchase the anthology “Threads: A NeoVerse Anthology” online at goo.gl/idtAa7.