Monique Fields remembers when she got inspiration for “Honeysmoke.”

It was when her eldest daughter began asking questions about herself, namely about the color of her skin. They were questions that took her by surprise because Simone was only 3 years old.

“She started asking questions about who she is, and I didn’t really have any good answers for her,” Fields said.

It seemed early for her to be paying such close attention to things like that.

“Basically, she pointed to my face one day, and she said, ‘Mommy’s a black girl.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, Mommy’s a black girl,’ ” she said. “(Then Simone) said, ‘Simone is a white girl.’ ”

Fields, 48, admitted she really didn’t know the best way to respond to that and told Simone, no, she was a black girl like Mommy.

“Which is not true and was not the thing to do,” she said. “Then (Simone’s dad) Ken said, ‘You have a little bit of both worlds. You’re a little bit of Mommy and a little bit of Daddy.’

So if I’m going to talk about inspiration, I guess it came from him, because he put that idea out there.”

Fields, who is the manager of communications at the University of Alabama Law School, did what comes naturally as a journalist — she began writing about the conversation she and her husband, Ken Roberts, had with Simone.

“I write to make sense of the world around me,” she said.

One result was an essay published in the online magazine The Root. She also wrote about the incident on her blog and finished a manuscript for her children’s book in 2011.

“When you have children, and you’re reading these picture books, you’re seeing these stories, and then you realize there’s a story that’s not being told,” she said, “and I realized I had a story.”

As a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, she attended conferences and worked with peers in critiquing groups to further hone her work.

“There’s not a lot of (illustrated children’s) stories that deal with identity and mixed race, and so I just kept at it.”

And she didn’t give up, actively working on the book for eight years.

“The thing that took the most time was getting my manuscript in good enough shape so that I could find an agent,” Fields said of the process. “Finding an agent took me five years.”

Now, nearly eight years later, “Honeysmoke” hit the bookshelves Tuesday. Its story revolves around a young girl who also happens to be named Simone.

“She’s just trying to find her way, her place in the world,” Fields said.

Her daughter Simone did inspire “Honeysmoke,” but apart from having the same name and also being biracial, she said, the rest of the narrative is fictional.

“It’s about a little girl who discovers her color,” Fields said.

Fields is hoping the book will evoke “a sense of security” with readers, to make them feel that they can be true to themselves, feel “comfortable in (their) own skin regardless of what other people think they see or think they know,” and choose their own identities.

“Honestly, if I could start a movement of people — no matter what their racial, ethnic backgrounds — to discover their own color, that would be my wish,” Fields said.

The book features an interactive page for readers to write down their own colors once they’ve discovered them.

“This isn’t just for mixed-race children, it’s for everyone,” she said. “I think it’s for anyone who’s ever questioned or not been sure about who they are and needs something very unique, that’s unique only to them, to say, ‘This is who I am.’ ”

Originally, Fields had a different title for her book.

“The name of this book was ‘Golden.’ You know, this child was golden … I was talking with one of my mentors one day, and she said, ‘Why don’t you just name that book “Honeysmoke”?’ ”

That was the nickname a cousin called Fields by when she was young and the name of Fields’ blog.

“I always thought, in my child’s mind, (it was because) my mother was light-skinned, a light-skinned black woman, and my father was dark-skinned. So in my child’s mind, that was what it was,” she said. “My mom was honey, and my dad was smoke.

“I thought this for 30-something years, then I one day got my cousin on the phone. I asked him, and I told him my theory, and he laughed at me.”

She said he couldn’t remember why he called her that, but what he did know was that wasn’t the reason.

The imagery of the girl’s mother and father embodying honey and smoke is brought to life in one of Fields’ favorite illustration spreads in the book. The illustrator, Yesenia Moises, interpreted the scene with the mother being black with darker, honey-toned skin while the father is white, with skin like the light, billowing smoke from a train. Fields said she wrote it the other way around — “because that’s how I thought of honey, smoke, you know, light, dark” — but thinks that it works either way.

“(‘Honeysmoke’) is a reminder of my child-hood,” she said, “but now it’s really this book.”

Simone is 13 now, and Nadia, Fields’ youngest daughter, is 11.

“I think they’re proud of me. It’s hard to tell, to be honest,” Fields said. “I can tell you that Nadia wants her own book … (she) asks, ‘Well, when is my book going to be published?’ ”

Nadia will get to read about a main character who shares her name someday — her mom has a few manuscripts written and plans to author future works. She’s planning to write at least two more illustrated books and eventually progress into writing either young adult or adult books.

“I will continue to write,” Fields said. “Honeysmoke,” published by Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group, is available for purchase wherever books are sold.