My love of writing began with a love of reading. Some of my favorite memories as a girl were of story time at the little yellow library on Main Street. I was so eager to read, I tried to teach myself at the age of 4 and when my parents saw that, they opted to enroll me in kindergarten two weeks after I turned 5 rather than have me wait another year. 

In elementary school, I learned to read and then I learned to write. And I loved to write. This skill was met with a great deal of praise from my teachers and a bit of concern when my writing became more mature than was considered acceptable for my age. I discovered Christopher Pike and later, Stephen King, making my first true love the horror genre. I wrote my first novel “The Night” in sixth grade about a vacation where a group of teenagers meet their demise in the most creative ways imaginable. One memorable murder was of a hot tub filled with acid. Unfortunately, that manuscript has been lost to time, but still hold at hope it will be unearthed from a long forgotten box buried in my moms garage.

Over the years, I started and stopped a number of short stories, but I lacked the confidence in myself to see the projects through. Those ideas never truly left but are still waiting in the recesses of my mind for their time to come. And they will come. It was a creative writing course in community college when I completed my first short story “The Impression of Leaves”. After turning it in and forgetting about it for months, I received the call that “Impression” had won the Elizabeth Breen Prose Award. All questions about my ability to write left me then. What was left was a matter of life and discipline.

It would be another decade before I attempted my first novel, “Beartooth”, and once I reached the halfway point, I set it aside with the knowledge that my technique and skill as a writer had not grown enough to complete the tale as I had envisioned it in my head. Another year passed, until one day while hiking the Owyhigh Trail in Mount Rainier National Park, inspiration struck. The lightning bolt that became “Wonderland” hit and would not relent until I finished a year and a half later. Only a few months into working on “Wonderland”, the idea came for my second work of fiction, “Lester”, which is currently in progress and due in 2024. “Beartooth” will be released in 2025. 

The journey to my debut novel has been incredible and challenging. I learned that writing was the easy part, the rest requires an extraordinary amount of work, patience, and the ability to overcome self-doubt again and again. Proving to myself I could do it was the first step and certainly won’t be my last. Follow me as I live my lifelong dream.