Hello

The first story I remember writing: when I was five or six years old I set up a desk in a closet, lugged over my mom's old Royal typewriter, and banged out an adaptation of the classic cat-sat-on-a-mat, adding a ghost and a cameo by Pug, of 1980s phonics reader fame.

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2009 was the year I decided to get serious about a writing career. I had an idea for a rhyming picture book that had an underlying educational theme, spatial cognition. It was so much fun to write, and it was the first fiction story with a beginning, middle, end, and a point, that I had written in a very long time. Something clicked. Four months later I joined SCBWI, the professional society for children's book writers and illustrators, and began to learn the craft and the industry. I finally knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life: write stories.

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In 2019 I revisited a long-held desire to write screenplays. I began to learn craft and build community. In 2020, it became even more important to focus on a new learning curve, a new challenge, a new way of storytelling. The joy of losing myself in my writing inspired the motto, "enjoy the process"; a motto I recommend to all writers.

 

And though I've written poetry for myself since my teens and had a poem published in 2016 (Highlights for Children magazine), it was only in 2023 that I wanted to start sharing my poetry and dive deeper into learning craft. I also adopted a new writing motto, "play," as a reminder to have fun with words and language.

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I live in Santa Barbara, where the west coast faces south, with my husband, two kids, and sometimes a dog or a cat (we pet-sit and foster). My favorite down-time is a book and the backyard hammock.