A little bit about me…

I was born in Seattle and raised in Ravensdale, WA, a small former coal town nestled in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. My family spent almost every weekend hiking and backpacking in the North Cascades, and this scenery inspired much of my writing from a young age. In 2009, I obtained my Bachelor’s Degree in English, with an emphasis on Creative Writing, from Western Washington University.

Post university, after a short stint in Southern California, I resettled near home and obtained a decent-enough corporate job. Then in 2014, feeling stagnant and restless, I embarked on a rather out-of-character adventure to New Zealand, appropriately flying out from Seattle in an airplane painted with Smaug the dragon (J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit). In this land of snow-capped mountains, alarmingly narrow winding roads, and rolling green hills dotted with fluffy sheep, I met my future husband. We lived in Christchurch for five months before journeying to Sydney, Australia, where we spent a year working, exploring, and plotting our next move.

Spain followed, a limbo of local wine and seaside café con leches while waiting for the visa that would enable the return home together. Cross-country motorcycle rides brought ancient cobblestone streets, orange tree groves, and cliffsides overlooking the blue Mediterranean Sea. Bare rock formations topped with crumbling castles helped to lessen my deep-rooted longing for mist trickling through dark evergreens. 

In Spring 2016, I returned to my native Pacific Northwest, where I lived with my husband, Chris, and our ginger cat, Paul. In 2024, renewed thirst for adventure took hold, and we traded spiked evergreens for a lush deciduous rainforest when we moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains, North Carolina.

A project manager by day, I spend my free time combating writer’s block by researching, brainstorming, and developing Lishka’s fantasy world. Opportunities to daydream plotlines arise while hiking in the mountains, riding passenger on my husband’s motorcycle, and, until 2021, ambling through forest trails on my beloved horse, Rosie.