Writing
I’ve been making up stories for as long as I can remember.
At eleven, I wrote a stage play for a youth competition and received a commendation. At thirteen, I was a finalist in the Barbara Story Poetry Competition. Years later, as an undergraduate at the University of Houston, I won the university’s French-language writing competition.
I went on to earn a BA and MA in Organizational Communication and began my career as a corporate writer. For years, writing was both my profession and my creative escape: corporate communications paid the bills while I tinkered with fiction on the side, partly for the challenge and partly to keep the other half of my brain entertained.
Eventually, the fiction demanded more room.
What I Write
Today, I write across age groups and forms, from young adult speculative fiction and children’s picture books to short fiction, microfiction, personal essays, and narrative nonfiction.
I’m drawn to character-driven stories about family, belonging, loss, resilience, and the complicated ways people care for one another. The form may change, but people and relationships remain at the center.
Young Adult Fiction
My current novel, The Lost Time Key, is a completed 98,000-word young adult portal fantasy with eco-fiction elements. Sixteen-year-old Timothy is thrown three centuries into an ecologically devastated future and must find his way home to save his younger sister—and prevent that future from ever coming to pass.
Children’s Picture Books
I’m also developing a five-book picture-book series inspired by my work with therapy dogs. The series follows Maggie as she learns what it means to be a therapy dog and discovers the many ways simply being present can help children and adults through difficult moments.
Writing for Adults
My writing for adults includes short fiction, personal essays, and narrative nonfiction. Recent work ranges from microfiction to a World War II family story about the identification and return of a soldier missing in action since 1944.
Selected Writing
A selection of current work across fiction, narrative nonfiction, and personal essay.
Triptych Collapse
Speculative Short Fiction
A routine global meeting at an extractive-industry conglomerate continues despite the warning signs—until the earth begins making its own decisions about who, and what, gets to remain.
Currently on submission
Unknown Soldier
Narrative Nonfiction
Eighty-two years after a young Army Ranger disappeared during a disastrous World War II mission in Italy, his family finally learns what happened to him—and that he is coming home.
Currently on submission
Six Steps
Personal Essay
Thirty-six years after being struck by a car in a pedestrian crossing, a woman considers everything that was measured after the accident—fractures, surgeries, settlements, pain—and the life that no one knew how to measure.