When I was younger I wanted to be a marine biologist and study dolphins and whales. Then I wanted to be an astronomer and study blackholes and supernovae and find alien life. Then I wanted to be a mathematician and prove theorems and study geometry.

All that time I was also writing stories. Because as much as I wanted to explore the universe and figure out how it worked, I also wanted to find out about people: How we decide to do the things we do, how we make sense of the big, bad, glorious world around us, how we fight and love and make our own destinies.

So that’s how I got where I am now.

By day, I develop GIS software that takes the round earth and smashes it flat in different ways. By night (or rather, by very-early-morning) I am a writer of books for young adults (and readers of all ages, hopefully). I am particularly drawn to stories with fairy-tale or mythical echoes in them, usually with lashings of adventure and magic and fun. Here’s a picture of my home office:

I live in an old house in Maine with my husband Bob and our dog Charlie, a border-collie mix we rescued from a shelter.

When I am not writing, reading, or smashing the earth flat, I can be found rambling in the woods, wrangling the stones in my garden, playing my fiddle, or having tea with my friends. I also recently discovered I love to travel. Here’s my husband and I in Paris, at the “point zero” mark in front of Notre Dame from which all distances in the city are traditionally measured. I am probably wondering what the distance is to the nearest pâtisserie!

I love learning new things and meeting new people, and my favorite thing about being a writer is connecting to other people. A story isn’t really alive until someone reads it. So thank you for making my stories live!

Looking for something more random? Here are a few of my favorite things:

  • Long hot baths
  • Thunderstorms
  • Dr. Who
  • Hot black tea with a bit of milk
  • Kumiho ginger perfume from BPAL
  • Pistachio gelato
  • The X-Men
  • Freshly picked strawberries
  • Dead Can Dance
  • Chicken Tikka Masala
  • The MOFGA Common Ground Fair
  • Girl Genius
  • Colorful socks