• Writing: There are hoards of people who "want to be a writer". I'm not one of them. Instead, I just want to write. To me, there is a difference between craving the attention and kudos of "being a writer" as opposed to the rush of climbing inside a character's skin, living their experiences, and watching their story-world build itself. Seeing words come together on a page in a hundred fascinating ways is immensely rewarding.

I am fortunate to be represented by Jessica Regel of JVNLA, and my first YA novel, The Vanishing Game, is a 2012 debut with BloomsburyUSA.


• Sign Language: I work for a local school district as a sign language interpreter, and I've been in every grade from first to senior. (I suspect this is God's way of making me learn all the stuff I didn't pay attention to when I was going through school the first time.) I get along great with kids of all ages, but I especially enjoy teenagers and constantly interact with both the deaf and hearing kids at school.
  
  
• Photography: I enjoy taking pictures and using photo-editing software. My camera is a Canon EOS 40D, and portraits are my favorite to shoot. I'll do anything for that great photo, including riding a mule to the bottom of Bryce Canyon, boogie boarding on the Oregon Coast, making naked babies cry while I try to get that perfect picture, climbing a mile-high sand dune, trespassing, going camping (which I dislike) or even shooting unsuspecting Amish girls out of my car window. (I still feel bad about that one, even if I got a great photo.)
  
  
• Journaling and Scrapbooking: It's important to me to document life events, and I only enjoy doing this if I can be creative. I have a lot of tools and papers, but I also like using Photoshop for digital scrapbooking. So far I've made more than 25 albums focusing on my family and the stuff we do.
  
  
• Reading and Movies: I read novels of all sorts, though my favorite is YA, of course. The one thing that keeps me from reading more than I do is my writing. While I'm writing I don't read other authors' work because I don't want to pick up their style or voice. I learned this the hard way when I was nineteen and wrote my first book. The dialogue in my sci-fi novel started turning gothic because I was reading Jane Eyre. I don't run into that problem with movies, though, unless the endings are bad. Then I rewrite them in my head the next morning.

 

MY PAST

• Childhood: grueling
  
  
• Teenage Years: worse
  
  
• Adult Life: great

This means that even if you're living in a rotten situation right now, eventually you'll have a chance to make your life become what you want it to be. Although I'd never choose to relive the first two decades of my life, I wouldn't change them either, because they shaped who I became. It was those hours spent in daydreaming escape that later created the storyteller in me.

 

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