For me, writing has always been, in one way or another, about self-discovery. When I was still very young, writing stories was a way to escape the small life I led. It allowed me to explore life through the eyes of someone with more power and freedom than I had. I could be braver, quicker, smarter, more deserving of love. I learned about what was important to me and what I wanted to fight for. I would act out scenes from my favourite stories and add original characters and scenarios. Somehow, creating fictional stories in my head also allowed me to become more grounded in the real world. Things were happening that mirrored events from my novels, and I felt more prepared to experience and understand them.

My teenage years were filled with short stories and poetry that will NEVER see the light of day. They are safely tucked away in my TrapperKeeper (those who get it, get it), and their confinement is by no means a sign of my embarrassment. Those angst-ridden lyrical poems were an ode to the Romantics I was slowly becoming obsessed with —or the authors I wanted to emulate. They are a love letter to The Lady of Shalott, The Vampire Chronicles, and every sad song I was listening to on repeat. Writing constantly during my adolescence may have negatively affected my math grade (sorry, Maman), but it set the foundation for the voice I would use as an author.

After my second child was born, I struggled with feelings of being trapped and limited in my life. Suddenly, there was only responsibility and the weight of my reality. There was no sign of the creative person I had been for most of my life, and I felt as though I had lost touch with the person I had been. So I started plotting a book while driving, while taking walks with my baby, and while spending hours tucked away in the house over the winter. I watched Mike Flanagan’s chef d’oeuvre, The Haunting of Hill House, and I created a family of women who became manifestations of me as a child, a teen, and as a lost mother. I published chapters of this book on Wattpad and sought feedback. My dad read the first draft. Then one day in May of 2021, I decided to share it with the world. This was The Bones of Our House.

This was the first of many novels. My sophomore release, The Queen is Dead, was born out of a desire to tell the story of a woman who had fascinated me since first reading Macbeth in grade eleven. I wanted to know what would lead a person to commit regicide and to take into herself the darkness presented in the play. More importantly, I wanted to give Lady Macbeth, Gruoch, her voice back. I wanted to tell her story without apologizing for it and without reducing her to the two-dimensional caricature of an evil woman the Bard left us with. I researched the historical figures and learned more about 11th-century Scotland than I ever planned to. I am infinitely proud of this novel, and I still consider it my soul book.

Currently, I have a dark academia love story titled The Arcane Education of Victor Bratten that is on submission with potential publishers. It is a gothic tale with an Orphean twist, an idea first kindled during my adolescent obsession with Mary Shelley and Greek mythology. It deals with blood magic, capitalist social systems, and the limits we will go to for those we love.

My fourth novel, The Furious Dreaming of Magdelen Buhr, is finally on submission as well! It is a folkloric, ecological horror story with hints of Wuthering Heights and eldritch gods.

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