Writing has always been one of my favorite hobbies (right up there with reading). So when an online friend told me they would buy a book if I wrote it, it really pushed me to pursue the publishing path.

My debut novel, Tristan Strong Punches A Hole In The Sky, took me about 18 months to write. The first draft took me ten months, and since nothing I write is perfect the first time I write it, it took me eight more months to revise it into the book you’re reading now.

A lot of the folktales I consumed when I was younger came either from someone telling it, i.e. a storyteller in a class or at a festival, or from audiobooks that my parents would play at night to help my siblings and I go to sleep. I’d say my favorite was how Anansi won the Sky God’s stories, which is why it makes an appearance in Tristan Strong.

Ugh, this is tough, but I’d say The Lord of the Rings omnibus. Reading that book actually won me tickets to see Michael Jordan play basketball when he was with the Bulls.

Absolutely.

I make coffee, forget about it while I chase a toddler, find my coffee, heat it up, then leave it in the microwave while I find the toddler, and then at the end of the day I hammer out several paragraphs before falling asleep at my desk.

Find the people that push you to be your best. Sometimes encouragement from other writers will be the motivation you need to get over a tough stretch. 

A lot of stories are about transformation. The characters we meet in the beginning aren’t the same at the end. Ask yourself this: what forces our character to change? What choices do they make, and what consequences do they experience, that encourages that transformation? [Hint: a great example is the story of The Three Little Pigs, and the choices and consequences they experience]

Read books, daydream, and play too many video games.

I don’t. Constructive criticism can help me grow. Negative criticism doesn’t help me at all, so I move beyond it.

“I have a pen that can write underwater. It can also write other words.”

A pharmaceutical metrologist is a service technician who travels around a certain area and uses hardware and software tools to make sure the equipment used to manufacture medicine is accurate. Have you ever taken Tylenol for pain or a metered dose inhaler for asthma? I worked on the equipment that made them!