My Story

Once upon a time… there was a little girl who dreamed big, but never in a million years imagined that she’d grow up to be a novelist. 

You know all those inspiring author bios, where the writer just knew from the time they scrawled their very first words that they were destined to write novels?

This isn’t one of those.

As a child, I was convinced I couldn’t write - especially not fiction. That kind of creativity, where one just pulls a story out of the ether, didn’t come easily. 

But I loved music. I grew up a pianist and a singer, and I was good enough that by the time I graduated from high school, I was convinced I was Broadway-bound.

(I was also determined to prove my high school biology teacher wrong when he declared me “too smart” to major in music.)

Turns out I was right. Kind of. It wasn’t my smarts that deterred me from a career in music, or my talent. It was the lifestyle. After two years of studying musical theater, I finally admitted to myself that the life of a traveling musician wasn’t for me. I’m a homebody, and I’ve always been happiest when I could put down roots. 

So I did a complete 180, and finished my degree in the only subject that interested me enough to keep attending classes: cultural anthropology.

I went on to a 20 year career at a natural foods grocery story, pedaling organic avocados and Fair Trade bananas and writing seductive articles about fruits and vegetables in my home town of Madison, Wisconsin. 

I met my husband in 2009. We started a family. 

Then the pandemic hit, and somewhere in all of the stress of being both a mom and an "essential worker", I began to ask myself: Is this what I really want to do with my life?

What happened to that girl who dreamed big?

At the same time, I began toying with the idea of writing historical romance.

Because here’s the thing about writing history. You don’t have to invent a new world, or come up with a story from scratch. You can draw on what’s already there, twist it and weave it into something new. Something beautiful. 

And that process, that idea, fascinated me.

In one magical moment, the fascination turned to inspiration and I wrote a sentence. Then two. A chapter. An entire novel. 

Roses in Red Wax. 

I published Roses in March of 2023, and so my author journey began.  

These days, when I'm not writing you'll find me in my garden, hanging out online with my writer friends, behind the wheel of an Uber or trying to talk my kids into eating healthy food.

And yeah, I've answered the question. This. This is what I want to do with the rest of my life.