About

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• I love to dance. I suck at dancing, but I love it. 
• I’m obsessed with brushing my teeth. I always have a toothbrush, toothpaste, and dental floss in my purse. Seriously. 
• Coffee and I have a relationship. I call it true love. 
• My sister, Cameron, is the funniest person I know. She once made me laugh so hard that I threw up on her. That’s a true story. 
• My first car was a white ’89 Subaru hatchback with orange towels covering the seats, glow-in-the-dark paint outlining the dashboard and bumper stickers everywhere. As you can imagine, I was not popular in high school. 
• My grandparents text message me daily. They’re very awesome. 
• In high school, I had a pair of patent-leather neon orange shoes that I wore shamelessly. <–This probably contributed to my lack of popularity. 
• I like vampires. And werewolves. And superheroes. But not clowns. Clowns are creepy. 
• I have two kids and I totally let them color on the walls. 
• My cousin once pushed me into a tadpole pond at my grandma’s house and then, while I was crying, he begged my grandma to let him keep all the tadpoles she pulled out of my hair. I was nine. It was traumatizing. She let him keep the tadpoles. 
• I worked at a credit union for 7 years. 
• During my employment there, I was held at gunpoint 3 times. 
• So, I don’t work at the credit union anymore.

I didn’t plan to be a writer.

Don’t get me wrong, I dreamed of being a writer, but it was one of those impossible dreams. Like being a rock star, or owning a spaceship. (I’m still working on the spaceship thing. If you have one, let me know. I’m serious.)

I planned be an artist—a painter—because that was a feasible career (and I really loved getting messy which is, like, a prerequisite for all artists). But fortunately, life doesn’t always go according to plan.

It all started with Nancy Drew.

When I was six years-old, while playing hide-and-seek at my grandma’s house, I climbed into a bedroom closet and stumbled upon a collection of Nancy Drew books. And when I say “collection” I mean horde. There were at least forty books in there. (Sure, we couldn’t afford to buy me a Care Bears lunch box, but Nancy Drew hard covers? Mandatory purchase. Whatever.)

Upon finding these blessed books, I was like, “Who is this sleuth girl who comes across a different mystery every single week? I must read more!” Needless to say, I was hooked. (Fun Fact: Ned was my first book boyfriend. My taste in book boys has changed rather dramatically over the years. *coughs* Will Herondale.)

After that, I became a voracious reader but still planned to be an artist. In high school, I was the girl who had her nose in a book and her hands in a bucket of paint.

After high school I went to Arizona State University, where I majored in design and wore more eyeliner and black clothing than a healthy person should. And it was during this epicly emo time in my life that my future took a turn.

I accidentally ended up in a creative writing course during my junior year—and by “accidentally” I mean, I failed to register on time and my adviser said, “You’re not taking college seriously. I’m putting you in creative writing,” like that was some form of punishment.

At first I was like, “Crap. I don’t TELL stories, I read them. Curse you, college adviser! Where the eff is my paintbrush?” But then…THEN…

Then I sat down and wrote my first paper.

And I cried.

Not because it sucked (although…meh) but because writing from the bottom of my heart had stirred something inside me—something starving, that I hadn’t even known was hungry—and I couldn’t stop.

I wrote short stories and comic books and poems and novels…I wrote anything and everything I could pull out of me. All the while I kept painting, even though this hungry thing inside me desperately wanted to be a WRITER.

But being a writer seemed impossible. And scary. And chock-full of potential failures. So instead, I put myself through school as a bank teller (bor-ing) and started my own design business painting murals.

Plan = Right On Track

Years went by—YEARS, people!—and I was still a closet writer. Until one day in 2011, I finally worked up the courage to send a little story of mine (titled Sophie & Carter) to a local publisher.

I told NO ONE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD that I did this. No one. It was the single most terrifying (and yet somehow exhilarating) experience of my life. I went home that day and updated my Facebook status to, “Do something brave today,” because that’s how I felt: Brave. I also felt nervous, sick, shaky, foolish, and scared out of my mind. But mostly, I felt brave.

Several weeks later I received a call from the publisher, and a few months after that Sophie & Carter was on the road to being published. *cue sappy music and multicolored confetti*

Plan = Blown To Pieces

I didn’t plan to be a writer, but I dreamed about it. And despite all my planning, my dream came true.

So do something brave today. You never know what might happen…