I was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1975, where I lived across from a library and dreamed of becoming an author (except for those days when I was more in the mood to be a hairstylist or teacher). As a pre-teen, I had a passionate love for Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Duran Duran. My friends and I would often dress up as Material Girls and choreograph dance routines to our favorite songs (what I would give to see myself as a ten-year-old Mr. Roboto). Roller rinks were hot back then, and there was nothing like the freedom of skating in circles while signing the words to “I Would Die for You” by Prince.
When my parents divorced in 1987, my mother and I moved to a quiet suburb near Dayton, Ohio, where I promptly learned how to tease my bangs and peg the legs of my jeans. I spent my high school years in an extreme state of self-conscious agony, focusing on my friends (love my girlfriends!) and boys (oh, if only I could talk to my younger self). I became very serious about my studies once I entered college, and graduated from Wright State University in 1997 with a bachelor’s in English Education. It was about this time that I started to believe I might not be a total loser. My high school nickname, “Clipboard” (earned due to my obsessive-compulsive tendencies), helped me land a great job teaching English, Yearbook, Film & Literature, and Modern Literature at Springboro High School in Springboro, Ohio, where I taught some really great people for eight years. I was fortunate enough to marry my best friend. He makes me laugh every day (so important), and supports just about every crazy idea I come up with. Which is why, when we had our first child, I was able to quit teaching to stay home. And write.
Throughout all of my childhood, I was obsessed with books. They were like water and air to me, and I could not have survived without the escape each story brought me. I have always felt the pain of the characters, and would imagine that it was my responsibility to read them out of whatever terrible situation they had been written into.
When I started writing, these insistent voices started talking in my head, and I could not get them to stop or quiet down. Until I wrote their story. They’re still talking, thankfully, and I’ll keep writing as long as they’re there.
It took three novels, a second child, and piles of painful rejections before I landed myself a wonderful and talented agent, Alyssa Eisner Henkin with Trident Media Group. Then, I suffered through a year of revisions, once again facing all my self-doubt, which I tried to combat by eating about a ton of chocolate. Finally, in July of 2008, I accepted a two-book offer from Egmont USA. My debut novel, The Tension of Opposites, released on May 25, 2010. My second novel, One Moment, released on June 26, 2012.