About
I believe stories
can change things.
Sometimes a world. Sometimes a life. Sometimes just the person who needed that story at exactly the right moment.
So, who am I?
That's a loaded question, isn't it?
I guess, in terms of being an author, I've had a love for stories for as long as I can remember. I really think I got that from my father.
My father was a very gifted storyteller, even though he would never have believed it himself. He loved telling stories about his past and his family, and he was very good at it. I think that's where I got my love of stories.
Growing up, I was always attracted to stories that made me feel something—stories that gave me an experience. The stories that left the biggest mark on me, the ones I remember to this day, are the ones where I felt like I went through something by reading or watching them.
As a writer, that's what I want to give my readers.
I don't want to just entertain them. I mean, yes, entertaining them is important, but I want to give them an experience that stays with them. That makes them think. I want to write something that makes them question their perspective, question their existence, or question the nature of how they perceive the world.
I want to change their world with what I write. For the better. Always for the better.
Because some of my favorite stories have changed me for the better.
Look at something like The Shawshank Redemption. I think that's one of the reasons I hold onto hope the way I do.
Because I've needed that so much in my life.
I was a single parent at nineteen, struggling with going to school full-time while working in the hospitality industry. I went through community college and then a four-year college, finished my art degree, and eventually had to accept that an art career wasn't going to support me and my son.
So I transitioned into the corporate world.
I've been there for almost twenty years now. I hated it at first, but eventually I found something in it that I actually enjoy.
Project management, where I am now, appeals to a part of me that, looking back, has always been there. I've always loved finding a problem, breaking it apart, working through it, and figuring out how to solve it.
I think that helps make me a better writer. It's how I organize my thoughts and my work to create these stories I love so much.
And I do.
I love writing.
Being able to escape into a world I created for an hour a day is one of the best feelings I can imagine creating for myself.
It's amazing, really.
But who am I?
That's a good question.
I mean, I'm a writer. That is me at my core.
Also, a woman.
I know now I've always been a woman. I just didn't realize it until much later.
Sometimes I think about what would have happened if I'd realized that earlier in my life. But then I wouldn't have the life I have now—and I do like the life I have now. I wouldn't have had all the experiences that got me here.
And I think I needed some of those experiences.
I lost both of my parents before I understood this part of myself. Sometimes I think I needed to go through that first.
I miss my parents.
I do.
I think that's why grief shows up in my work so much. Living with grief. Dealing with grief. Loss.
Maybe that's why I gravitate toward those deeper emotions of grief and pain and sadness, and why I'm not afraid to delve into them. When I write about them, I think there's a certain reality or truth there because I've experienced those things myself.
When you've experienced something, you have a different perspective when you write about it.
I think that's important.
But here's the thing
That's also why there's always hope in what I write.
Everything I write has a bit of hope in it. Even the darkest stories I've written have an underlying thread of hope.
Because I think that's what we need in the world right now.
The world can be dark and chaotic. We need to be entertained. We need something that can take us away for a while and remind us that there are good times. That there were good times. That there can be good times again.
That it's not always going to be this way.
There is hope for the future.
I think, as writers, part of our job is to buoy the community—to buoy the world—to help get us through the storms.
There's an idea from Anne Lamott I've always loved about storytelling that compares it to people aboard a ship being tossed around in a storm at sea.
The storyteller can't necessarily stop the storm.
But we can sing a song.
We can make the journey a little brighter for the other people on that ship.
I think that's our job as writers.
And that's what guides me when I write.
So I write fantasy. I write science fiction. I write magical realism.
Because that's what excites me.
That's what I want to see in the world.