HERO'S AND VILLIANS

I love writing about magic and nature. I love characters who are in pain and don't get life right. I also enjoy seeing them face what's stopping them from their growth.

In terms of antagonists, they believe in their cause even when we don't agree with it. They have to be who they are, and the better they are at it, the more friction it creates between them and the protagonist.

    WRITING OUR TRUTH

When we like music, it's because it moved us. When we love a movie, it's because it transported us into another reality.

In order for a writer to really engage a reader, we have to feel our own pain, anguish, and failures and share them through characters who are always some part of us.

I think the only way to strike a chord in someone is to come from a place of truth inside us.

It's scary to go inside myself and write the raw stuff. Sometimes my own characters grab my heart, make my eyes tear up, or really anger me. But what I'm really saying is that there is a part of me doing that to myself.

It's difficult to share that with others. Writers, I think more than any other artists, reveal the most, because we're relaying words, one right after another. Movies can't do that. Not really.

But when I want to stay shallow, and sometimes I do, I remember this: Life begins where fear ends.

   WHAT I LOVE ABOUT MY           PROTAGONISTS

Julion is the protagonist of the trilogy The Star Seed Hunter. Heroe is the protagonist of The Myth of Heroe.

What I love about Julion, a fantasy and science fiction novel targeted for adults and young adults, is her struggles and how she doesn't see her own worth no matter how extraordinary she actually is.

She grew up in a neighborhood where showing weakness got you no sympathy. And she was raised in a home where her father was a brute and her mother couldn't save her from the realities that kind of home produces.

Julion blames herself for her past. Even her mother's weaknesses. But that's what heroes do. Because inside, they're strong enough to shoulder the world. And that's why I love Julion.

Heroe is different from Julion. A fable and myth targeted for children ages ten to sixteen, Heroe is an intersexed child left to die on a deserted island inhabited by dangerous creatures. All Heroe had were the stories their parents told about knights who survived the unimaginable.

Heroe may be young, but they imitate and mimic what the brave knights did to survive — when there was no food, when they'd lost their weapons, when they needed to hide and not fight, and when they needed to fight and not hide.

I love seeing how Heroe coped with their fear, and how that coping accumulated into something larger than survival. Into a choice. To cross a dangerous river toward the city of lights that had been calling them for years.