I’ve never been very good at staying in one world.
Fantasy author with an imagination that refuses to behave and characters who rarely follow the plan.
Stories for the heroes we become.
Before there were novels, there were bedtime stories.
Stories have been part of my life for as long as I can remember. My mom read to me constantly when I was little, and as I grew up, it was rare to find me without a book. I carried at least one almost everywhere I went.
The first story I remember actually writing was for an elementary-school spelling assignment. We were supposed to use our spelling words to create a story, which apparently was all the excuse my imagination needed.
Around the same time, I had started telling myself stories at night to help me fall asleep. Except it wasn't a different story every night. It became one enormous, ongoing series that lasted for years. Every night I picked up where I had left off the night before. When I wanted new characters, my main character would have a child and the story would move on to the next generation. I even kept a list beside my bed so I could remember the characters' ancestry.
And yes, I was still in elementary and middle school.
By middle school, one of my friends and I were spending time together writing short stories and making covers for them out of construction paper. By high school, I had written my first novel.
Somewhere along the way, storytelling stopped being something I simply loved and became part of how my imagination works. A story starts, then another piece appears, then another, and before long there are characters with histories, families, and entire worlds growing around them.
As an adult, not much has changed. I still love books, I still read constantly, and I still write because apparently my imagination never learned how to stop making stories.
Life is rarely quiet, and I wouldn’t really know what to do with it if it were.
At home, life usually includes my amazingly supportive husband, four boys affectionately known as the Horde or the Chaos Goblins, and more pets than any reasonable person probably needs.
When I’m not writing, there is almost always some other project happening. I crochet, dream up far more characters than I could ever possibly use, and regularly decide that whatever random idea has just wandered into my head needs to become a project.
I’m also endlessly curious. I love languages, learning new skills, and figuring out how things work. The more unusual the skill, the more interested I become. I can go from wanting to learn bookbinding or another language to wondering whether I could pick up archery, welding, or some completely unexpected skill that caught my attention that week. If there’s something new to learn, there’s a good chance I want to try it.
That curiosity carries over into adventure too. I love hiking, 5Ks, and finding new things to try, especially if they give me a good story afterward.
My family and I are also big on games. Role-playing games, trading card games, and video games are all regular parts of the chaos around here, and they have probably contributed more than a little to the number of characters living rent-free in my imagination.
But as much as I love adventure, my favorite place is still somewhere much quieter: curled up in my reading corner with a blanket, a cup of tea, and a really good book.
Fantasy has always been one of my favorite genres, but I’ll happily disappear into all kinds of fiction. I love stepping into worlds completely different from my own and, somewhere along the way, discovering something new about myself too.