My start in writing

Let me preface this by saying that I have always loved to read and write. I have fallen love with Pablo Neruda, James Joyce, Patrick Süskind many times from reading their books. They really shaped the way I write even now.

I started writing stories in school. This passion eventually led to me applying for an internship at a newspaper when I was 16. It made sense to me to pursue this path because I got to write stories every single day. I ended up pursuing this career for a while and loved every minute of it. When it was eventually time for me to really pick a path I realized that, ultiately, a career in journalism was not in the books for me. I pivoted. Fun fact: my previous boss/ mentor actually said that I was a traitor for starting my career in marketing 😂

Now onto my first book.

My first “book” is still unfinished. It is a coming of age short story collection. The word count is about 60,000 so there was still room for it to grow. It included stories about love, loss, growth… I actually submitted it to a few publishers and had one get back to me indicating their interest, but it never felt like it was complete — partially because I met my husband as I was writing and the longer we were together, the more it felt weird to publish something about my past romantic connections. So now I have a folder of stories just hanging out in my Google Drive.

Maybe I’ll get around to finishing it, but for now, I’m focusing on Hungry Little Ghosts (Picnic Heist Publishing). A bit more about that story in the next post.