Storytelling has been the absolute love of my life for most of my life.

The whole thing started when I was a little girl bent over the child-sized rolltop desk in my bedroom, very seriously writing and illustrating my own books. Binding them together with strips of red ribbon.

Man, I love stories.

I have always loved having my hands in a book: writing it, illustrating it, designing its layout. Even when I was a little girl, I had this feeling that stories were big and beautiful and powerful.

From the start, stories were never just something on the page.

I told stories into cassette recorders (and made my poor brother act out any part I wasn’t playing myself). I was a music nut; an Ozark Mountain Daredevil taught me how to play guitar and turn my poems into songs. I have always been fascinated by visual storytelling, and was constantly doodling the characters who would show up in my printed tales.

In grad school, I found out how much I loved to teach storytelling.

I taught freshman comp at the collegiate level. And the teaching only continued after graduation. While I drafted my earliest manuscripts, I taught private music lessons (and, yep, songwriting). I also tutored K–12 students in reading and writing. I didn't know it then, but I already moving toward writing craft books and teaching courses online. Some days, I think I love sharing what I’ve learned as much as I love the learning itself.

My First Book

It’s a special thing to see one of your books finally hit store shelves. A Blue So Dark released in 2010, and since then, my work has been traditionally published by some smaller houses as well as a couple of the Big 5: HarperCollins and Penguin Random House. My work has gotten starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Booklist, and has won the silver medal in Foreword INDIES Book of the Year and the gold medal in the IPPYs.

But that’s actually not the story I tell when anyone asks what it’s like to be an author.

My middle grade novel, The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky, landed on several state readers’ lists, which was its own kind of thrill. But then one class adapted it into a school play. They wrote the script. They directed it. That book’s about a young folks artist, and the class even built their own sculptures for the set. I watched the whole production online, and I still don't have a better way to describe it than: it was the coolest thing that has ever happened to me as a writer. Strangers took something I made alone in a room and turned it into something they made together, out loud, with their own hands.

Sending out a story into the world and watching it become someone else’s inspiration?

Doesn’t get any better than that.

My Own Imprint: InToto Books

I started my own imprint and began to publish my own work. The goal was to farm out as little as possible so that I would learn the most from the process. These days, I format my own interiors and design the covers. I’m behind marketing and promotion. Just like that little girl at her rolltop desk, my hands are in every single part of publishing one of my stories (well…minus the red ribbon, of course).

If I don’t have a pen in my hand, I’m usually holding a cup of coffee…

These days, my stories live on and off the page.

They say your first love never dies, and that’s definitely true for me. I’m a storyteller. Always am, always will be. A storyteller on the page, through audio, through visual art.

I’m also sharing what I’ve learned through one-on-one editorial services and online courses, writing craft books and YouTube videos.