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Hi all!

I find introductions to be the most awkward things in the world. “Hello, nice to meet you. Please give me a 3-5 second summary of your life because that’s all the time we’ve got.” 😅 In general, I’ve always been bad at talking about myself. But here goes!

I am a late bloomer in the trade, and I suffer from imposter syndrome. As a young person who started dabbling in writing, I struggled with feeling inadequate pretty early on. My imagination was not very… imaginative. At best, I could play pretend with stories that are already out there (my first endeavor was a Pokémon fanfic when I was nine. I know I was nine because I was *almost* old enough to be a Pokémon trainer, and I was READY FOR IT 😂). But making my own? That was a skill I never possessed.

To make matters worse, I actually quite hated reading. I spoke two languages before I learned English, and the words on the pages always looked like a mess to me. As I got a bit older, my middle and high school English courses made me hate reading even more. My imagination was still not very imaginative, so my reading was at face value. I couldn’t understand where people were getting all the symbolism they found, and I got more and more frustrated with each assignment.

Yet somehow, despite hating reading for nearly two decades of my life, I ended up graduating with an English degree in my undergrad. If that’s not character development, I don’t know what is. 😏

During my time as an English major, I realized what power fiction wielded: it had the ability to teach you things that you otherwise were too stubborn to learn. Fiction tends to ninja its way past your defenses and teach you through story. My English classes taught me how to relate to God and see Him in my own story, and I think it showed me a glimpse of God as a Person rather than something I studied in my theo courses.

So now I’m here! I finished my first novella draft about 5 years ago, but I never touched it again because I hated it. 😅 I knew nothing about worldbuilding at that time, and it was just a flaming hot mess. I started planning my current project late in 2017. Around Spring 2018, I wrote the first words. And shortly after that, it was pointed out to me that I tell stories like I’m recalling a story someone else told me, and there was significant emotional distance between the reader and my protagonist (hello and thanks, INTJ-ness!).

I’ve nearly given up more times than I’d like to admit. Most recent was just before I started this project. I was about to start seminary, though I didn’t actually know what I was going to do with that degree. It just felt like I “should” do it. Of course I should learn about God and theology. And God told me seminary was a bad idea by getting me to play Final Fantasy XV. 😂 I was so excited about all the pieces that came together to give us such a great story. When I realized I was way more excited about all the story elements in FFXV than I was about starting seminary, I knew I needed to follow God’s plan instead of mine.

Welp. This ended up much longer than I was expecting. 😂 My bad.

So much to learn! So much to write!

Hello, everyone else in the boat!