What Inspires Me

I discovered the power of a good story when I read Charlotte’s Web, by E. B. White, as a young girl. I reread that book so many times, hiding away in my closet so I could cry freely when Charlotte died.

The magical ingredient that makes an unputdownable story is what inspires me to write—along with my lifelong quest to discover deeper truths through spirituality and science. My writing reflects those things that intrigue and define me.

Completed Work

• MY GOODBYE AND HELLO, 43,000 words, is a middle grade contemporary novel with STEAM elements about a young girl who struggles to find meaning as she copes with the death of her grandmother and the premature birth of her sister.
• THE GREAT MOUSE PROPHECY, 43,000 words, takes middle grade readers on a fast-paced animal adventure of a young mouse who’s searching for his colony’s leader prophecy.
• LOST INSIDE HER is a 71,000-word young adult supernatural romance, in which a young girl with a mysterious mental disorder befriends a Native American classmate who helps her discover who she is.

Works in Progress

• THE WISHING EGG is a middle grade fantasy told by two young girls who live centuries apart. Burdened and bored with farm life, each girl dreams of escaping the drudgery of caring for animals and tending a garden. When the Earth unleashes its cataclysmic event, they must face their intertwined fates.
• ME: TRANSFORMED is a non-fiction account of my sister’s two-year Peace Corps experience in Cameroon, Africa.
• FULLEST explores what happens when someone loses almost everything she thought was important in her life. When the small plane carrying a magazine editor and her family goes down in a remote mountain range of Taos, New Mexico, she not only struggles with loss and survival, but she discovers the surprising truth about her marriage.

Past Highlights

• Story opener: Field of Violets, third place in 2016 Rate Your Story Awesome Openers Contest
• Twitter contest: Lost Inside Her, query and first 250 words advanced to Agent round in 2016 QueryKombat
• Short story: Super Ritchie, first place in Big White Box, Spring 2015 Writing Contest
• Short story: One Potato, Two Potato, third place in Writer’s Weekly, Fall 2012 24-Hour Short Story Contest
• Poetry: Cherish the Life, first place in Body Electric, Vol. II, 1986, a University of Illinois at Chicago literary magazine