About The Author
What inspired you to be a writer?
It was a culmination of things, really. My mom is a voracious reader, which rubbed off on me at an early age. Then my family and I moved to an empty Alaskan mountain range when I was 9 until I was 13. We still enjoyed television, but when you rely on a generator for electricity, television and computers can’t really become a habit, so I happily filled that gap with books. The kick-start was my homeschooling grammar course. My assignment? Write a short story. It felt amazing to create something of my own. As years passed, I realized the stories I really wanted to read didn’t exist yet, and I started to write them.
Where do you get your ideas?
Everywhere, really. I love psychology and learning about people. What drives us? How do we respond to the world? What are our hopes, fears, and dreams? Inspiration can be found anywhere, from our loved ones or favored songs, to history books or even a line of ants marching over a mound of gravel. All you have to do is look.
Which books drew you to the fantasy genre?
Actually, with exception to several of Laurell K. Hamilton’s urban fantasy novels, I never read fantasy books before writing them. My dad raised me on the history channel, so I was always drawn to the out-of-our-time vibes. We shared a love for the Lord of the Rings movies, and I was drawn to the Skyrim game like a magnet. My husband introduced me to Magic the Gathering cards, Dungeons and Dragons, and other RPG video games like Baldur’s Gate. I watched every fantasy show I could find. It wasn’t until I was ready to publish Webs of Chaos that I read my first full-on fantasy book series – Shadow and Bone, by Leigh Bardugo. I was a little late to the fantasy novel party, but I’m here now!