I’m an adult fantasy author and part-time cataloger for a library consortium. My current work-in-progress is a fantasy of manners/mannerpunk novel about a young woman named Sable struggling to carve a place for herself in a society that considers her inferior. Luckily for her, she has a powerful ally: Mian, the goddess of desires.

As the oldest daughter of a librarian and a teacher, I learned to love stories from an early age and have been writing my own for as long as I can remember. My first novel, written when I was in elementary school, was a seventy-two-page epic about a princess who was kidnapped by an evil sorceress.

Inspired by writers like Mercedes Lackey and Jennifer Roberson, I continued writing fantasy during high school. Sable, the protagonist of my current WIP, first came to me then, but after struggling for years to tell her story, I decided I was not mature (or skilled) enough to do her justice and put it aside.

In college and after, I focused on writing “literary” stories because I thought that was what a “real” writer wrote, but I never really connected with them. And then one day when I was going over The New York Times bestseller list as part of my day job as a cataloger, I came across Sarah J. Maas’s Crown of Midnight. The description of a fantasy world without magic intrigued me, so I read (consumed) the assassin novella prequels to Throne of Glass. They sparked memories in me of those old fantasy stories I had written because I wanted to, not to try and gain respect and recognition. And I thought maybe I was ready to give Sable the attention she deserved. Initially, I was afraid people wouldn’t be interested in her story, so I spent years crafting a narrative that, in the end, still didn’t feel true. After several drafts and lots of feedback, I finally decided to go for it and write the story I wanted to tell—the story Sable wanted me to tell.