Everything is connected, and nothing stays where you put it.

My heart is in the novel, and my drug of choice is fantasy.

I’ve been writing original fiction since the seventh grade, when I realized that if I waited until I was “good enough” to write the stories playing out in my head, I’d be waiting forever. So I turned on the desktop. In 2018, I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English/Creative Writing from Georgia College & State University. I have never, and will never, use generative AI in my work.

I’m immensely inspired by landscapes and how they form the foundations of the human experience: communities, economies, language, and conflicts are all shaped by the land we share. We know the power of place in literature, and as an ecologist, wildlife biologist, outdoorswoman, and conservationist, I infuse the heartbeat of the living earth into the worlds my characters inhabit.

I believe in reading widely and deeply across genres. On my bookshelves, you’ll find contemporary genre bestsellers (ex. Red Rising, Gideon the Ninth) next to literary classics (Dubliners, All the Pretty Horses, collected works of Shakespeare), themselves next to nonfiction and academic titles ranging from How to Hide an Empire to The Historical Atlas of Knights and Castles. Being a student of everything helps create believable fiction. Fun fact: I’ve studied Machiavelli’s The Prince and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War specifically to write grounded geopolitical conflict.

Some of my favorite authors include:

• Tamsyn Muir (The Locked Tomb series)

• Ursula LeGuin (The Dispossessed, the Earthsea cycle)

• R. F. Kuang (The Poppy War, Babel)

• Samantha Shannon (Priory of the Orange Tree)

• James Islington (The Will of the Many)

• Naomi Novik (Spinning Silver, the Scholomance series)

• Gabriela Romero Lacruz (The Sun and the Void, The River and the Star)

Older titles I adore include Brave New World (Huxley), Animal Farm (Orwell), Rebecca (du Maurier), and the works of Jack London and James Joyce, to say nothing of the foundational work of Tolkien and Lewis.

My Fiction: Grounded Eco-Fantasy

My magic is subtle. It’s in the landscape, the animals, the bonds between people. It’s the magic of being fully alive. No Sword that Seals the Darkness, no magic minerals, no chatty dragons — instead, imagine all the best elements of the fantasy/science fiction genres, strip them of their magical fail-safes, and task them with surviving with nothing but their own human wit. What will you do where’s no magic sword or inexplicable magical talent to save you?

I am in the querying process for my debut novel WHILE I AM ALIVE (see Current Projects). Think the backstabbing, scheming, and breakneck sword fighting of Game of Thrones meets the tyranny of Mistborn and the intrigue of The Will of the Many in the broken world of Breath of the Wild. WHILE I AM ALIVE is complete at 140,000 words and is the first of a planned series, though it can be modified to stand alone.