Full Biography:
I was born in the screen-free era of the 80s in a small town in Western Pennsylvania. My family soon moved to a suburb outside of Washington, D.C., and eventually settled in a farming town in Eastern Ohio. However, Western Pennsylvania was always a part of my life and I visited my grandparent's magical farm multiple times a year.
As a child, I became interested in history, folklore, and ghost stories. I read enough haunted history books to still keep me up at night. And many summers were spent at my town's one-room local library, borrowing the entire Nancy Drew, R.L. Stine, and Christopher Pike series. These books and my favorite movies and TV sitcoms inspired me to begin writing my own stories.
In High School, while on a beach vacation, I happened upon a used copy of Practical Magic stuffed inside our rental condo’s TV cabinet. Like many others who’ve stumbled upon the magical realism genre, I was never the same. I loved disappearing into a world that is both practical and magical, and I believe our world is more like magical realism than we are capable of seeing. Sometimes, if we’re lucky and paying attention, the veil is thin enough to experience what cannot be explained.
After graduating High School, I attended Kent State University, where I learned that the world was full of unique people and limitless knowledge. I graduated with a major in Photo Illustration/Journalism and a minor in Art History, but returned shortly after to get my Master’s in Library and Information Science, where I specialized in Local History and Archives.
My library career involved digitizing history collections in a windowless office to create the Summit Memory Project (summitmemory.org), and helping people discover their local and family histories. Then I moved into higher education where I was in charge of developing an accredited library at a local community college. After the birth of our first child, my husband and I moved to Nashville, TN, and I “retired” from library work, briefly returning to photography while also virtually assisting a graphic designer.
My true passion, however, was always with writing, and after the birth of my third child, I decided to pursue it as a career. Through fate, coincidence, or just the weirdness of living in Nashville (If you lived here, you’d understand), I befriended Beth and Jeff McCord and joined the YEC team. I currently write curricula, articles, and books, and have worked my way up from editor to ghost writer, and now co-author (book releasing 2024).
I am actively pursuing my fiction writing, and through years of trial and error, I’ve found a sweet spot writing Middle Grade fiction in the magical realism genre. My books center around a fictional Western Pennsylvania town called Danville. Each book is a stand-alone novel, yet connected by place. The storylines feature familiar characters, but are separated by generations and time periods. Through my books, readers will learn about the many families who call the strange town of Danville home. They’ll discover their secrets and enter a world that is ordinary enough to be relatable, but with just enough magic to make them long for more and recognize the magic in their own lives.