this is me

Hi and welcome to Pitch Wars folks and anyone else who might be stumbling by. My blogging has been only sporadic the past four years. (You know what's been around four years? My oldest kid. Coincidence? Not a bit.) But I'm glad to have you here.

Some tidbits about me:

-I'm married with two kids, both boys. They're fun kids and get along well, but they've got very different personalities. Give the older one a craft and he'll be happy for hours while the younger one says hi to everyone in the room, finds hidden outlets and colors on the door.

-I love to crochet amigurumi dolls. I've got several original designs I've come up with over the past year. Here are a few:

 



[Clockwise: baby dinosaur, phoenix, mouse, weeping angel, little boy blue.]











-I'm also into chocolate making, and I think in another life I would be a chocolatier. I love making truffles. And of course I love eating them too! But only the dark chocolate.

[Square, heart, star and shell shape chocolates.]

Ok, so what about my writing?

I write fantasy only and always, mostly of the YA variety. Here are a few of my past projects:

The Never Silent: A 17-year-old con artist from 1840s Manhattan impersonates his best friend to board an old sailing ship in order to find his friend’s killer. (YA)

The Curator: Someone from the Museum of Worlds is littering Earth with magical artifacts. But not to worry! The Curator of Earth is on the case. (Lower YA/Upper MG)

And my current book:

The Neverwas: A gladiator discovers rot at the heart of this magical world, where memories are not what they seem. (YA)

With this book I've given myself an added challenge of making all of the characters gender-ambiguous. Why?

Well, to begin with I couldn't decide whether I wanted to write a "girl" book or a "boy" book. And I thought to myself, "Why do I have to do either?" So early on I knew I would be writing a first person story with a protagonist that was never outed as male or female or nonbinary.

But of course, since there is a love interest, once you decide for yourself whether the protagonist is a particular gender, there becomes an assumption about the sexuality of the protagonist based on the love interest's gender.

So I wrote a few scenes between the two, attempting to keep the love interest's gender ambiguous as well. And I found that to my surprise, it wasn't as hard as I expected.

So I decided to go for it with all the characters. It's been an interesting experiment and taught me a lot about my own assumptions when it comes to gender. I hope the reader has the opportunity to think through some of those things too.

Alright, but those of you who've known me a while might be thinking, "But don't you already have an agent?"

I did, yes. We parted a year ago on totally friendly terms. If you have any questions about that, just ask me.

For now I'm excited to be submitting to Pitch Wars. Good luck to everyone involved!