AUTHOR: My whole life, I've loved hearing and reading stories, and creating worlds of my own. As a child, I spent countless hours drawing crazy contraptions on paper, or building vast fortresses in a sand pile behind my garage. There was hardly a time I wasn't off on some adventure in my mind, to the dismay of parents and teachers alike. So it's no big surprise I took all that daydreaming, all that longing to really see the wonder of creation around me, and started pouring it into discovering hidden universes in my own mind. For quite a few years I tried my hand at writing, mostly working on one, massive fantasy novel, but it wasn't until I had kids and they became voracious readers that I found my passion. There's no greater audience than a child. I'd rather have a simple review from a kid that says, "Awesome book!" than a five-star review in the New York Times. Of course, if anyone at the Times wants to try to prove me wrong, I'd be willing to let you.
EDITOR: I have loved books since I was too young to remember, my love of books a folktale itself, one told by my mother at family gatherings. I have dim impressions of my mother recounting the stories of The Iliad and The Odyssey, spinning them from memory like a classical orator, and my dad reading me Treasure Island. My mother was an English teacher, and so inevitably she supported my desire to read. I graduated from Whitman College with a degree in English, and graduated from Portland State University with a degree in Book Publishing. At Whitman I worked as a writing tutor, and at PSU I focused on editing. My goal as an editor is to help clarify the writer's vision and polish their story into the best version of itself. Above all, my goal as an editor is communication: helping a writer to translate their thoughts into a form that others can understand.
