Being a writer has always been my destiny. I’ve LOVED books ever since I was a tiny child. Creating my own stories came naturally to me, and my favorite things to play with as a kid were my doll house and my paper dolls. When I got a little older and went to school, I suffered from an anxiety disorder called selective mutism. Basically, I was too scared to speak, so for six hours every day, I lived inside my imagination. In middle school, I started writing my stories down and wrote my first novel in a spiral-bound notebook.
In high school, I attended a magnet program for literary arts. There I was introduced to Natalie Goldberg’s classic Writing Down the Bones and began to cultivate a journal practice which I continue to this day. I got my BA in English at the University of Maryland. I wrote my first “real” novel during college and the few years after. It was never published, but I did query agents with it and had a few “almost, but not quite” rejections from agents who asked me to send them my next novel. The next novel I wrote, The Snowball Effect, landed me an agent and was published by HarperTeen in 2010.
After college, I had a litany of jobs, most of which allowed me to satisfy my curiosity by getting an up-close look at other people’s lives. I was a legal and medical transcriber, a relay operator, and a dog walker before finally landing my dream job at the public library.
My children were born in 2011 and 2015, and I began to homeschool them in 2018. All I’ve ever wanted to do with my life is write books and raise my children, so I feel incredibly lucky to spend the majority of my time with my kids and surrounded by books.
Some non-book-related things I enjoy: Hiking, watercolor painting, road trips, nostalgia, miniatures, drinking the same smoothie for breakfast every morning of my life, rooting for the underdog, and listening to podcasts to distract myself from unpleasant chores.
Some random trivia: My favorite Pokemon is Psyduck. I am the oldest of seven kids. My favorite sibling is Lyndsey. (That is just a test to see if any of my siblings ever visit my website.) I’ve been to 19 different Chuck E. Cheese locations in eight different states.
