About the Author
I wrote my first story when I was 5, on a stack of notecard-sized pieces of paper that my grandma cut up and stapled together because I kept adding pictures to my coloring books. "Just work with blank paper," she told me. "Tell your own stories." I've been following her advice ever since, telling stories to stuffed animals, to my captive little brother (in the sense that I held him captive, not that he was necessarily always captivated), and now to my children. Now I am ready to share them to a wider audience.
The stories I write feature a lot of the elements I love to read: found families, swashbuckling adventures, snarky heroes. My major influences range from Tolkien's languages and mythology to C.S. Forester's awkward but clever Horatio Hornblower, with a healthy dash of Robin Hood-inspired shenanigans mixed in. My poetry leans toward Romantic blended with a bit of slam, especially when it comes to playing with the sounds and meanings of words. Alliteration might be my bread and butter, but homonyms are my jam.
When not moonlighting as a writer, I daylight as a middle school teacher who talks about writing. In my limited spare time, I enjoy reading, drawing portraits, learning languages, and trying to convince myself that I can be a gardener. I live in Wisconsin with my amazing husband, two wild children, two clingy cats, and a houseful of dying plants.
