I grew up in a tiny place in rural Alberta, Canada. I plan literally everything, except my plotlines. I have a stationary addiction and I read about 100 books a year. I married my husband a month before I turned 21, eleven months after we started dating (19 months after the first time we met) and we’re coming up on 15 years, in September 2023. We have a 5 year old spitfire of a girl and most of my world revolves around the two of them. 

I’ve been writing since I was a child. Mostly essays about my thoughts/life experiences, but I also dabbled in short stories and attempted a couple of novels in my early teens that were heavily influenced by teen movies. But they never amounted to much. Then, during a particularly groggy middle of the night feeding for my newborn (in 2017) I scribbled a scene that had been playing on repeat in my head, onto 16 post-it notes and forgot about them. In October 2020, I found them in a notebook and while I re-read them, more and more scattered scenes played out in my head So I sat down to write every night until I finally typed The End. And that’s how Showcase (my dark debut) was born. 

Chaotic, at best. I’m what I’ve heard referred to as a quilter. I write scenes out of order and then stitch them together. Also a pantser, through and through. When I sit down to write a book, all I am certain of is the characters. Their personalities, how they look, how they think. But I often have no idea, outside of a vague trope direction, of where their story will go until I’m actually writing it. I also almost exclusively write in my car (waiting for school or extracurricular pickups) or after midnight.

I’m currently a SAHM to my hurricane of a girl, so I spend most of my time with her. I play video games with my husband and I read a lot, too. I will always be a reader first and an author second, because I wouldn’t have ever sat down and finished my debut novel, had I not started ARC reading for indie romance authors.

I don’t really celebrate that part. I honestly panic for a day or two, that it’s terrible before I send it to my own kindle for a read-through and my first round of basic edits. Once those edits/additions are complete, it’s off to betas. And then it’s on to the next book. I usually have 2-3 books I’m working on simultaneously.

On release day, I bake with my five year old. I did it for my first release because I had a cake to make anyway. And then it became a thing because it serves as a good distraction from the fact that I have new words out there for public consumption again.

Banana bread, usually.

The Grey girls bloomed in my mind unexpectedly and I started taking notes on their characters before I had even finished the last book in the previous series. Then scenes started distracting me from the other book I was trying to finish and this series became a beast of its own. It wasn’t until book one was finished and book two was almost there too, that one of the characters decided that he needed to change the game, so the prequel novella was born too.

Every one of my characters shares at least one trait with me and with someone I love in real-life. Those traits can be anything from a part of their appearance, to whole swaths of their personality. Some have more in common with real-life people than others, but only two characters I’ve ever written, were actually (loosely) based off of individual people that I’ve known at some point in my life.

Haha. I originally intended for this particular book to be a bully romance, but the characters definitely had other thoughts. It wound up being exactly what it should have been all along, but letting go of my hope of writing a bully romance (because that’s sort of what the market tends to want) was a big challenge on this for me. And also writing the characters dramatic enough to do their personalities in my mind justice.

A little bit of everything, really. Between the various rabbit holes of research I went down, to mapping the town, to documenting the angsty thoughts. I also had a lot of fun creating VERY detailed character profiles for every character. I loved watching

This book, in particular? No one specific. But I’m a huge Meagan Brandy fan. The way she weaves stories is literally goals for me. Samantha Lovelock, Lindsey Iler, Kandi Steiner, Ilsa Madden-Mills (and so many more) are all big inspirations to me as well. I love their writing and I probably wouldn’t be writing at all, without authors like them.

This one is hard, without spoilers because my absolute favourite, would definitely fall into the spoiler category. But this is a close second, particularly the last line: 

*Holding her tight in my arms makes me feel better, lighter than I have all week. When I set her down and drop my arms to my sides, she retracts her own, tilting her head at me with so many questions flashing behind her eyes. “I can walk you out, I’m sure you have places to be,” Lennox whispers eventually, turning to open her bedroom door. 

Not really Len, I seem to have demons lingering everywhere that you’re not, and I don’t really want to play with them right now.*

I’d give almost anything to spend a day with Flynn and Evie (from my previous series), I think that everyone needs people like the two of them in their lives. I’d probably ask what took them so long to figure it out. But also, Grant. I have no idea what I’d say, but the guy has the most restless mind I’ve ever stumbled across and can make a pop culture/history reference for just about anything. I think meeting him would be an adventure.