Hi! I’m a writer living in Sheffield with my partner and two sweet kittens. Besides writing and playing my guitar, I enjoy acting, drawing, and doing anything that involves animals. I have an undergrad in biology and I just graduated with a master’s degree in science communication. I’m working on my second book, which addresses inequality in a dystopian future.

In this blog, I hope to share my experiences and any writing advice that I unearth along my literary travels.

A short biography:

I was born in Utah and lived there until I was four. These first four years are a jumble of memories. I can remember building snowmen in white drifts as tall as I was. There was a little green pond that always fascinated me– mostly because I couldn’t tell what was beneath the pond scum. There was an amazing library with glass walls (I thought they were scary), but I thought the small playground in the kids’ section was far more interesting than the books.

We moved to Texas, where we waged war on the fire ants (I’m pretty sure they won) and grew a vegetable garden big enough for a king. Then we moved again to Indiana with its long, hot summers and its sudden ice storms– I still remember the five of us crouching in front of our gas fire with sleeping bags when the power went out for a whole day!

When I was nine we moved overseas to Switzerland. My brain could never have imagined how different it would be. It was beautiful there, and kind of scary at first (on my first day there I was kicked by a crazy old man on a tram). The people there didn’t speak German, like I’d thought. They spoke Swiss German, which only vaguely resembles German and, like old English, doesn’t actually have a fixed spelling! I remember depending solely on trams and my own two feet for transportation. It was hard, but there were lots of nice things– the toy stores were amazing, with shelves and shelves of beautifully carved wooden animals and people. The chocolate was nice, and in the winter I can remember wandering through stalls and dipping beeswax candles at the Christmas Fair.

It was during my first year in Switzerland that I started taking writing more seriously. It was the middle of November and a friend of ours mentioned NaNoWriMo. It sounded great, so my mom, my sister, and I decided to try it. In fifteen days I wrote 3,000 words and I was thrilled; I’d never written that many words in so short a time before. If you haven’t heard of NaNoWriMo check it out here or on the young writer’s version here.

After getting tired of living in an apartment (the floors were so thin we could hear our downstairs neighbor yawning) we moved to the country. It was amazing. We lived right in the middle of two horse stables and fields of highland cows. I can remember waking up at 6:30 every morning to help muck out stalls (I’m the kind of person who takes every chance I can get to be next to horses!), and hunting for potatoes that the potato pickers had missed.

I was twelve and a half when I started writing Aza. I was trying to do Camp NaNoWriMo, but I was failing at it (every year– I can do NaNoWriMo, but for some reason, not Camp NaNoWriMo…). I only managed a few thousand words.

That autumn we moved to England. It was one of the hardest moves for me. Leaving friends is bad enough, but at least you can tell them where you’re going– I couldn’t explain to the horses or the baby cow I had been taking care of. But a month after we moved NaNoWriMo started and I continued writing Aza.

Eventually, I started playing guitar and then writing my own songs. Most songwriters write from experience… My first song was about hating someone so much that “I”  was going to fly to Mars to get away from them– I had to make sure everyone knew that it was entirely a work of fiction!

Many years later–I’m still living in England and I have no idea what the future will bring!