I can’t recall a time when books weren’t a significant part of my life. My parents read to me when I was young, then with me as I got older, until I began to read on my own. They saved me from boredom, from many days spent sick in bed, and most of all, from myself. To this day, my shelves are lined with books—many of them fantasy novels, though there’s a little bit of everything if you look closely enough.

I was one of the art kids in school. I don’t remember the moment, if there ever was one, where I chose to be a writer. I think, like Lizzie Bennet, I was in the middle of it before I knew I had begun. But somewhere along the way, my gratitude to all the authors who had unwittingly kept me going turned into a determination to pay that kindness forward, and I’ve been writing non-stop ever since.

I write mostly in the fantasy genre, with some horror sprinkled in here and there for good measure. I write often about dark themes—death, mental illness, and the high cost of magic among them—but never without a sense of humor and hope. My stories tend to live in the space somewhere between “happily ever after” and “nevermore.”