I’m from Boulder, Colorado, though my roots are planted in a small Kansas town. Though stories and reading have always been an essential part of my life, I didn’t begin writing until 2009, when a swine flu outbreak piqued my interest in the 1918 influenza pandemic. My husband and two young daughters and I were living in Spain at the time and non-essential travel was discouraged, fever checks occurred at airports across the EU, and people worried about the mounting death toll. Then, 200,000 worldwide deaths alarmed us, and I kept wondering what the devastation of 50 million dead looked like. Learning scientists and historians believed the 1918 flu may have originated in my home state of Kansas further hooked me and gave me the idea for a historical novel.
I devoted countless hours to researching, writing, and revising. My idea and how to tell the story flourished once I discovered the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver and found my people and honed my craft. My short story The Enemy Within inspired my novel and received an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers, and I was accepted into The Book Project—an intensive two-year program at Lighthouse that supports writers in finishing their book-length manuscripts.
Eleven years later, my manuscript finally felt complete, and I begin querying agents in early 2020, coincidently as our own pandemic struck. While that historical novel has not yet sold, I am hopeful it will one day find its place in a bookstore, perhaps soon now that we have some distance from our own pandemic and might be ready to explore how science and public health systems have evolved, but grief, fear, censorship, and politics were eerily similar.
Common advice to writers out on submission is to begin their next story, and that’s exactly how I spent much of COVID-19, working on my current work in progress, On The Rails, a story inspired by my brother and about a hobo named Cowboy who rides freight trains across the country in the 1980s and 90s.
Though my work to date is vastly different, both stories explore themes of family, home and its many definitions (is home a place or something you carry with you?), religion and philosophy, feminism, independence, knowing your true nature, and self-growth. Both stories have their characters experiencing traumatic scenarios and emotions—escape, death, grief, war, addiction, fear, guilt—but upon surviving, they understand that change can, eventually, be good for the soul and help us make sense of ourselves and our world.
My husband and I met on a blind date in college. We have two daughters, fiercely independent young women now, who I remind myself I encouraged. 😂 We travel as often as possible, and I credit my travel blog for creating my good daily writing habits. When not immersed in writing, I enjoy downward dogs, camping, and hiking. A sun-kissed tomato from my parents’ garden in Kansas might be my favorite food.