About Me
I greatly enjoyed growing up in a wonderfully diverse and multi-cultural area of Southern California, and now LOVE calling majestic Colorado home. But goodness, I do miss yummy So-Cal Chinese food! I can most often be found writing, researching for books and future plans, exploring the back roads of Colorado with my boyfriend, hanging out with friends and kids, working on miniatures…and dreaming of living in a tree house on some beautiful property. Getting lost in one's imagination is highly underrated!
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Besides being an author, I also like to think of myself as an international K-12 to postgraduate educator, inspirational speaker, expert in children's spirituality, miniaturist, small-business owner, and world-traveler.
My Journey Into Writing
Ever since I was a young child, I’ve been fascinated with typewriters and typing. This picture of me gleefully typing away on my mom’s old typewriter at two years old, is one of my favorites. Before I could read and know what I was typing, my dad would take my typed strings of letters and read back my gibberish to me with great flair and animation. I loved it, and would laugh and laugh and laugh. I’m sure that’s where my love affair with typing began.
My imagination however, was jump-started by hanging out with my best friend’s family. My best friend (Jennifer Roselund Sharon), her brother (Andi Roselund), and I got to listen to their father tell amazingly creative and funny stories, made up just for us! Then when we’d go hiking or on long journeys, everyone would tell a group story – one person started and then everyone took turns adding to the story. We had so much fun! I’ll never forget the flying bunk beds, or the battling eggbeaters that would never die off…. Little did I know I was being prepared to use my imagination in the years to come.
Jennifer and I made an attempt at writing a story together, and I made a few attempts on my own, but they didn’t get off the ground. In high school, I enjoyed writing essays, some poems and lots of letters. My mom was great at giving me writing prompts, and my dad was an excellent editor and really helped to hone my skills. Sometime in high school I also started keeping a journal. At one point I wrote so much I would go through one journal about every three months! I still like keeping a journal.
In college I wrote a few articles and papers and continued to enjoy writing. I even toyed with the idea of changing my major to English, but settled on Social Work instead – my goal was to help at-risk children and youth. And that is still a goal in my life.
I didn’t start writing my first novel until after college. I was teaching some young people how to start writing a story, and I made up an example to show them. I liked my example and decided to keep going with it. Eight years later (yes, eight!) "The Realm: the Awakening Begins" was published.
It’s fun to see, years later, how the adventures with friends and the influence of our parents have come full circle. We are still creating stories together. We’re publishing some of the stories Jennifer wrote as a child, Andi and I have been working on various musical ventures related to my books…and I’ve been having fun getting lost creating novels.
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You never know where childhood adventures will lead!