I have been a storyteller my entire life. Whether I was daydreaming during class and creating worlds with the classmates around me. Or telling myself stories to calm my mind and put me to sleep. Or sharing something funny at a bar surrounded by friends. Storytelling has always been a part of who I am.
When I was in my late twenties, I started writing two very different, but similar novels. My completed manuscript, The Marriage Wars which takes place in a dystopian Sacramento, California setting. And Until Then, a coming of age novel focused on a young woman trying to navigate love and religion. Both stories needed to be written at that time in my life because as a late twenty-something new mom, I was trying to figure things out.
The main characters navigate body image, self-doubt, love (lost and found), religion, and mainly the socialization of young women into believing that they are not whole just as they are -- but rather, they need a man to become a valid member of society.
Fast forward ten years, two children, a successful teaching career, and almost all aspects of the American Dream...and the pandemic. I needed an outlet for how I had been experiencing the world around me, so I picked up The Marriage Wars and started working on it again. It became the focus of my Creative Writing Master's thesis. It consumed my weekends, evenings, and the moments in between.
What was profoundly challenging with #themarriagewars was the elements I had written about in 2012 were coming true in 2020...and later, June 2022. I had to change the dystopian world to not have gone through two pandemics because the darkness of the current one was still around me. I had finished the final full rough draft days before Roe v. Wade was overturned...something I wrote about in 2012 and could only see as fictional, until it actually became real in June.
I write stories about women because our voices matter. Literature serves as a mirror to society and the authors who are entering their thirties and forties right now have come of age during a monumental time in our world. Women are trying to find their voices both inside and outside of the patriarchal system that told us for years that we weren't "SOMETHING" enough or we were TOO MUCH of SOMETHING.
We are lucky to have so many options to share our voices and lift up those of others. We are lucky to live in a time where our messages can be read by millions around the world. We are lucky to see that yes, things are changing for us and the generations who come after us.

“And I'll rise up. I'll rise like the day. I'll rise up. I'll rise unafraid." - Andra Day
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