My Story
I first became serious about writing back in 2000 when I took a class at BYU focused on writing science fiction and fantasy, taught by Dave Wolverton. Coming up with my own worlds was addicting, though I didn’t think I was good enough to ever become a published author. Still, I kept at it, taking more fiction classes and working on short stories.
Then I signed up for Writing for Children and Young Adults, taught by Louise Plummer. I was hooked right away. I don’t know what it was about young adult writing that just resonated more with me than everything I’d been working on until then, but whatever it was, I couldn’t stop.
The next significant step happened when I met another aspiring author in BYU’s English Masters program. Brandon Sanderson had his first novel coming out in about a year and a half, and when he heard I also wrote fantasy, he asked if I’d be up to be in a writing group with him. We became fast friends, and I stayed in that writing group for the next 5 years, meeting weekly to go over what we’d written and give suggestions to a group that ranged from about 4 to 8. I’m competitive by nature, and so the fact Brandon kept turning in submissions week after week made me think that was just the standard thing writers did. I followed suit. I finished one book, then another, and then another. That’s when I started to get serious about getting published.
Vodnik, my sixth book, was published in 2012, about seven years later. The time between had been filled with lots of hopes and plenty of disappointments. I learned being a published author isn’t some magical ticket to automatic book contracts for the rest of your life. I kept writing. Kept finishing books. The Memory Thief (my 11th book)came out in 2016, and then The Perfect Place to Die (book number 17) came in 2021, followed by Don’t Go to Sleep (number 19) in 2022. A Family of Killers (number 20) will be published in August 2024, and I have another one (Death in the Dark, number 21) coming August 2025
I’m sure there will be more ups and downs to come in the future, but for me, the bottom line is that I love writing. I’d do it even if I didn’t get paid to. I write what interests me. Currently, that’s a combination of my love for horrors with my librarian love of research. Historical thrillers scratch both itches at the same time, but I can’t say for sure if I’ll stick with those for ever.
Personal Life
I went to high school at Council Rock (before there was a north and south) in Newtown, Pennsylvania. From there, I studied English for a year before heading out on a Latter-day Saint mission to Leipzig, Germany. Those two years opened my eyes to how different life could be for different people, and it changed the trajectory of who I was and what I wanted to do.
When I came back, I finished my undergraduate degrees in English and Linguistics (still at BYU), and also got married. Our first child arrived while I was in grad school in English at BYU. I had planned to go on to get a PhD and become an English professor, but life had other plans. In a flurry of changes, I switched tracks and got a second masters in Library and Information Science from Florida State (distance learning before distance learning was much of a thing).
Once I graduated in 2007, we moved our family of three to Maine, where our second child was born a half year later. We’ve now been here for almost 17 years and have three children in all.
When I’m not working in the library or writing, I love to watch movies and TV series, read books (goes without saying), play board games and video games, and I collect and play Magic the Gathering pretty obsessively. (I’m the advisor for the university’s MtG club, and I run a draft pretty much every week.) I’m also still very active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I have blogged about all of this and pretty much everything else you can think about over the years since I started in 2007. These days, I’m dipping my toes into TikTok just a bit.