I've had a passion for writing ever since I was in elementary school. I fell in love with writing in fourth grade, and have been writing ever since! It's not until I reached high school that I finished my first novel, and when I did I knew I couldn't stop there.

Skin Nation was inspired by a nightmare I had actually. Years ago, I went to an arts school that was an hour from me so I would have to catch a bus at 4a.m. every morning and wouldn't get home until twelve hours later--and that's IF I didn't have after school rehearsal! One morning in March, I was listening to one of my favorite bands--Hot Hot Heat--and fell asleep listening to my favorite song on their latest album to date--"Future Breeds". I woke up and wrote down everything I saw in the nightmare. Needless to say, half of what I wrote down will actually premiere in the sequel of Skin Nation.

Rejection letters. Simple as that. I do hope and pray to one day have a literary agent find me and be published by a major book company--ahem, HarperTeen--but for now, I'm enjoying being my own boss and building a rock solid fan base.

So far, Smashwords has advertised my first book on their site and people have been checking out the story pretty progressively. I haven't come back to the site and seen that someone new hasn't at least downloaded a sample of the book and for now, that's all I care about. I just want people to read my books and fall in the love with the characters like I did when I wrote out their stories.

My greatest joy is getting messages from people on various social media sites who have read my writing and encourage me to keep writing. I write to encourage them so to have that encouragement and passion retaliated is such a wonderful feeling. The greatest joy for me is making other people feel inspired by my own works.

My fans are the reason why I write and stopped telling myself that my books are trashy garbage. Plus, in a few years, without them I don't eat so...

Right now, I'm working on another fantasy book--"Marked" is the working title--about a teenage alcoholic and the clique at her school called the Elites who find out what lives in the mysterious woods in their town one night after letting a dare go too far. The book is a lot deeper than that, I promise, but I don't want to give too much away right now. Just know it's about a troupe of a new kind of mystical creature and there's a cute romance on the side. That will all make sense when I publish a sample soon...

Stephen Chbosky, Sara Shepherd, Ned Vizzini, and Barbara Park (RIP).

Oh gosh. When I'm not writing, which lately has been more than half of my time, I'm working, filming movies for school, writing music, or at church. Or on Facebook. Or on Youtube. It's a hard first world life.

Oh yes! The first story I ever wrote was the first of a series I wrote in elementary school about a girl named Nikki Thomas. She was a girl about to enter an arts school who had dreams of being a famous singer one day. She meets quite a few interesting characters on the way and discovers herself through the tribulations she conquers with those that she meets in school and in competitions, and of course boys fall for her left and right. I can't even tell you how many drafts of those stories I have sitting in my drawers.

I'm still developing my writing process, in all honesty. For the longest time, I would wait for inspiration to find me. One random day, I'd just be listening to a song and the song would take me on a visual journey of this character's life, and then they would just start talking and not stop until I wrote out the final product of their story. It's like meeting someone new--who's a little annoying--every time, but it's a lot of fun. That still happens, but I've learned to control The Voice and write out every plot twist and major event that comes to mind, then go from there while trying to maintain the structure of what I previously experienced. In short, I outline, but not really. I'm a liberal organizer.

Of course! Junie B. Jones and Her Big Fat Mouth. Growing up in elementary school, we had to get these things called AR points--which I got a ton of and won awards for--so I would check out as many Junie B. Jones books as I could. The first thing that drew me to Junie B. Jones and Her Big Fat Mouth was obviously the hysterical cover, but also how I could relate because back then I never knew when to be quiet--I still don't, but that is beside the point. I got in trouble a lot at school for talking too much--mainly, second and third grade because my best friend was in my class. I read the book like it would help me somehow. The only self-help book I will ever need.

My desk is a floral laptop holder with a Macbook Pro named Professor Mac--cliché I know--warming the surface who is neighbors with an Android smartphone that turns off every thirty seconds.