Look and Listen

Biography

I'm a 2004 graduate of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), majoring in English, minoring in Creative Writing and Sociology. I've been writing short stories for as long as I can remember, and started on my first novel at age 18. Now I'm working on my 5th novel! I really love animals, especially cats. Before working at my current job as an editorial coordinator for a pharmacology journal, I worked as a veterinary technician, and I loved being able to help animals. I'm a vegetarian and animal rights activist. I've always lived in Maryland--born in Baltimore and currently in Laurel. I live with my husband and two cats.

Inspiration

I find inspiration in many things--everyday occurrences, new experiences, poetry, other literature... my novel "Liquid Bones" was greatly inspired by William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying," not in the content of the book, but the style in which it was written. Faulkner seems to have an attitude that you can do anything in fiction--there are no boundaries. I tried to remember that in writing "Liquid Bones." One of my greatest experiences in finding inspiration was when I started writing my third novel, "This Crimson Valley," a book about a futuristic dystopian society in which a religious group struggles to survive persecution and attempted genocide. I visited Terezin (formerly Theresienstadt), the concentration camp in Czech Republic. It was a very disturbing, and yet moving experience--one that helped inspire me when I was writing a book that essentially was about another Holocaust. It was something I won't ever forget.