Brief Author Bio:

I wrote my first story during church when I was around eight years old. Ever since then, I've been writing little snippits of stories. While until 2004 I never finished a full length novel, I have at least a few short stories that I had over the years tried to expand. I've been collecting all these bits and pieces in a box and I hope to someday go through them again and finish the stories that have remained neglected for years.

I find my inspiration in everyday life and in my surroundings. When I write Fantasy, you'll find yourself transported back to the place where I grew up, the temperate rain forest of Alaska. While, real life experiences inspire the mainstream and young adult pieces. And though I prefer to write Fantasy, I find myself writing other genres more during NaNoWriMo.

In 2004 I wrote 'Murder in Hartzog 203' which borrowed largely from my college life and mashed it together with things my sister had told me about her and her friend's experiences at another Christian university. Over the course of the month, it transformed into a satirical murder mystery that just barely passed 50,000 with copious amounts of word padding.

In 2005, I wrote a 140,000 word manuscript that still has not left the hole I hid it in after finishing. While set in the future, it has a very mainstream fiction feel. Both the main characters are writers and snippits of things they "wrote" find their way into the novel which was titled Plot Bunnies after I incorporated and mashed all three novel ideas that I got over the course of the month.

I never finished my 2006 novel, which was going to be my first fantasy attempt. The notes are still sitting in a notebook somewhere waiting for me to finish. I was working on my Master's degree at the time and for some reason I also managed to completely forget about NaNoWriMo in 2007 while in the last year of my Master's program.

In 2008, I managed to find the inspiration I needed to write and finish my first fantasy novel. Two weeks into the month, I started banging out the novel and ended at around 53,000 words.

This year's novel follows a seventeen year old girl whose parents are getting divorced, and though my parents are only just now getting divorced, it still affects me in ways I never expected and it has inspired me too look back and think what it would have been like if I was still a teenager. This is my first attempt at a novel length YA story.