About

I like conflict, and hardships. Things don’t come easy in real life so I don’t think they should come easy in fiction, plus it makes for a boring book. My favourite topics to explore though are inequalities. As human beings we like to make certain peoples better or higher up on an invisible ladder than others. Whether by color, gender, social class, etc, we like to classify groups differently and stack them accordingly. It’s fascinating as an author and frustrating as a human being.

Second favourite is technological advances and their impacts. Even in fantasy when you introduce a new technology (or magic) the balance and structure of society changes. Sometimes in very small ways, sometimes in huge ways. It’s always fun to explore the hypothetical outcomes.

I love world building; it’s a lot of fun for me. I could spend hours crafting the tiniest details in a world that may not even make it into the book or story. It’s a way for me to ask ‘what if’ on a world-wide scale and then try to answer it. Even if the world I’m creating is based off of the real world, like in science fiction, you normally get to take one or two things and really explore the possibilities. And with Fantasy there is a whole lot more to explore.

Ever since I was little, telling stories was what I was good at. I would sit at my Great Grandma Hunt’s knee and tell her my stories. She encouraged me to write them down so that one day other people might enjoy them. At the time I secretly thought she only said it so that I would stop bothering her, but she was always willing to listen to my stories so I decided to take her advice. Since then, I can’t imagine my life without writing. It’s a way for me to control everything from the weather to what a character says, which means I don’t have to be a control freak at home 🙂

I truly believe that inspiration is everywhere; you need only to look for it. Before I had children of my own, I used to be haunted by night terrors. Horrible dreams that would leave me shaking when I woke up. As a way to cope, I started writing them down to get them out of my head. After a while they got less horrible and in a strange way more interesting. I was able to remove myself from the dream and watch what was happening like a movie. These dreams often gave me the greatest inspiration for stories of all shapes and sizes.

Since having kids I don’t have them very often at all, but I now find my kids are my greatest source of inspiration. They way they look at the world, ask questions, and their statements about how things should work in their mind are fascinating. If you can get over the annoyance factor of their incessant questions, they can blow your mind at times.

The author who made me curious about Science Fiction and Fantasy was Ann Maxwell in her book “Timeshadow Rider”, which I read when I was 12. However, I learned how to build complex and beautiful worlds from Anne McCaffrey (read her Pern and Catteni series, they are my favorites). Steven King taught me to embrace the gritty dark side of reality (The Stand is awesome), and Arthur C. Clark showed me how to fall in love with a character despite their faults (check out his Venus Prime series co-written with Paul Preuss).

The authors that I would encourage you to read everything they’ve written, would be Brandon Sanderson,and Julie E. Czerneda.

I go by time rather than by words. With two little kids, if I’m not in a good writing flow that day it might take me a long time to hit a certain amount of words. So I write as many words as I can get within 1 and half hours everyday with one day off per week.

And though I hate to say it, since I am very much a night owl and not a morning person, scheduling my 1.5 hours in the morning has been a huge help in getting through my writing projects.