I was born in Westerville, Ohio in 1994. It didn’t take me long to discover that I loved to read, so it was probably no surprise that I started to write my own stories. A great deal of my dad’s printer paper was sacrificed to my handmade volumes, their pages messy with smeared ink and blotted where my marker drawings bled through. Other than the fact that I had no artistic ability and my plots were shallow at best, I was sure that I was destined to make the bestseller list.

By the time I was seven, I had turned pro. My second-grade teacher gave the class an assignment to write a fall-themed poem, but she made the mistake of saying we could write about “anything we wanted.” I really took those words to heart, because while my classmates were writing about leaves and acorns, I wrote a poem about… unicorns. It ultimately worked out for me, though, because my poem was selected for publication in the Anthology of Poetry by Young Americans!

I loved school and learning, but my favorite subjects were languages. I was lucky to go to an elementary school with an outstanding foreign language program, so between absorbing languages like a sponge and constantly having my nose in a book, I became an enormous word nerd. (That’s still my main personality trait.) I also became more interested in writing during middle and high school; I had a lot of ideas that were “really good this time!!!” (they were not really good) and “could totally become a book!!!” (they did not become books). I briefly considered studying creative writing in college, but, well, Ohio State has a lot of really great language and linguistics classes. One look at the course catalogue and I was drooling. I definitely don’t regret that decision — I studied a bunch of languages and even got to study abroad in Rome — but I also never stopped writing.

A year or two later, I got an idea in a flash: what if a group of kids woke up inside their own story? That was all that I needed to get started. After five years of on-and-off work, I decided that I was finally ready to bring my half-finished book to a creative writing program. I figured that I could learn some more about character development, building a plot, maybe springing a sneaky plot twist… what I did not expect was that I’d have to turn in a finished draft of my book! Yikes! Amid puzzle rabbit holes, some serious cases of writer’s block, and one or two significant panic attacks, I actually did complete my first draft by the due date. Then the real work began!

The Treasure of Cajmoor is my first novel, but I have also written articles for StarTrek.com and the magazine Silly Linguistics. When I’m not writing, I enjoy reading, bingeing my favorite TV shows, playing the violin, and boring people to death by yakking about where words came from. When I am writing, I enjoy staying up late like a raccoon and destroying my circadian rhythm. (That’s how you know you’re a real writer!)