We’re going to start things off by being as cliché as possible: I’ve always loved to write. But, I serve you with that statement and raise you one more: I’ve always loved making up stories. My cousins and I grew up together playing variations of house. Being the oldest, these variations included complex stories with our imaginary friends that led us into different worlds and realms existing beyond the naked human eye. My family can vouch that my mind was always somewhere fantastical. When I wasn’t reading stories, I was making them up and writing them.

My first written story was inspired by “Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse” by Leo Linni. We read it in my first-grade class, and I recruited my teacher and classmates to create our own version, “The Magic Purple Pebble”. My teacher created hard copies for every student in our class, and it extended to every other first-grade class in my elementary school. The second story I ever wrote was in the third grade, and it won a local contest. Something about students staying overnight in their school to see if it was haunted, and they learned the janitor lived there. I had journals full of various tales and short stories, ranging from more realistic fiction to fantasy. I was always playing with my dolls and acting them out when I didn’t have my cousins to boss around. As my writing progressed (meaning I learned how to spell properly), they got longer.

I was 13 when I finished my first book series. I hand-wrote it in multiple composition notebooks. There were three books in the series, and it was a YA fantasy series. A year later, I would find Wattpad, which I used through high school to publish 2 additional, complete YA fantasy series (4 books each) and 2 others that remain unfinished today. At my peak Wattpad days, the first book in one of my series had nearly 20,000 reads.

I joined a Creative Writing Club in high school, where I published multiple short stories and poems in our district, along with academic anthologies. My senior class even voted me “Most Likely to Succeed” because everyone knew I was a writer. My friends in high school would read my books, and I had two English teachers who allowed my friends to count my books towards their reading goals for the year. By then, I realized that I would become a published author one day.

College got the best of me. I originally planned to major in Psychology, but it just wasn’t working. I knew I loved reading and writing, so I decided to take the English major route at my college, specifically a Creative Writing degree. I didn’t know what I was going to do with that, but I said I’d figure it out. I took Creative Writing 101 and 201, where I produced more short stories that only reiterated my passion for writing.

In the end, I went on to become a Content Marketer and even got my Master’s degree in Literature.

Through college and into my early- to mid-20s, I found myself coming up with ideas, writing the notes, maybe getting some characters down, writing a chapter or two if I was lucky, and then leaving it to collect dust in my Google Drive. Between work and life and trying to “find my place in this world”, I was struggling to find my passion again. My love for reading even fell away. Coming into Corporate America, perfectionism got the best of me.

In 2021, I picked up reading again and read 7 “fun books” that year. In 2022, I read 33 books. Since then, I can average 3-5 books a month (depending on my work and writing schedule). In tandem with my increase in reading, TikTok and the blossoming of Indie Authors reminded me of the biggest motto I live by: Everything happens for a reason. I watched author after author break down the barriers of the publishing world and use social media platforms to market themselves. I just sat there and watched and thought to myself, “I’m a writer, and I’m in marketing. Why have I never thought about this before?”

In 2023, I decided I was so done waiting—waiting for the right moment, waiting for everything to be perfect, waiting for more free time, waiting to complete my reading goal. I was offered a job that didn’t exhaust me or require me to “hustle hard” or sacrifice 10+ hours of my day just to make a decent living. I took it, and in May 2023, I set a goal to finish my debut novel by mid-September.

I finished it by the end of August, and if you’re here, you can guess how the rest has gone.

So, what’s the story here? Your dreams are planted in you for a reason. You cannot ignore your calling. Yes, the leap is scary. Yes, it requires you to be so vulnerable. But, when you get there, and you realize you’re actually doing it… There is no better, more freeing feeling than that moment.

So, thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for reading my books. Thank you for reading my story. To the people who have known me since I was hand-writing my books in Physics in my junior year of high school. To the people who loved me through my best and my worst. To those who have listened to me talk about “publishing my books one day”. To the readers who have discovered me since before I published my debut—and Book 1 of The Sirians Series—Darkness Comes Again. To the community that has made it possible for self-publishing to actually work.

I am eternally grateful.