By day, I'm a user experience designer; by evenings/weekends, I write novels from my home in Scappoose, Ore. My newest is Awake in the World, due February 2019 from Roaring Brook Press; my most recent, Eleanor, was published by Crown in 2016 and has since been translated into German, Portuguese, and Turkish.
As the sun sets off the coast of the small California town of Orilla del Cielo, the silhouettes of oil rigs loom. Their shadows look jarring against the serene backdrop, their sharpness a reminder of unfulfilled promises. To Zach, they are also a reminder of loss—his father, an oil worker, drowned years earlier. With his family struggling to make ends meet, Zach feels he’s destined for a bleak future.
Until he meets Vanessa. She's an optimistic girl from a wealthy family whose sights are literally set on the stars. Inspired by her idol, Carl Sagan, she plans on studying astronomy at Cornell. But as oil prospectors in search of black gold know, the future is uncertain...and fortunes can always be flipped.
I've never been the sort to write in my books; until recently, I never quite understood the motivation to do so.
Today was my final day at the software company where I've worked for the past (nearly) five years.
I've written a lot lately about tools: my search for a notebook that satisfies me in every way, for a pencil that leaves a rich mark and doesn't dull quickly.
"Voice" is something a writer tries so hard from their earliest days to locate, then sustain.
A few things I’ve learned about writing, its place in my life, and not asking permission to do it.
My pile of notebooks—the ones for the next book project—have sat basically untouched on my desk for the past couple of weeks.
Eleanor and Esmerelda are identical twins with a secret language all their own, inseparable until a terrible accident claims Esme’s life. Her family left in tatters, Eleanor is forced to grow up very quickly.
As the years pass, Eleanor’s painful reality begins to unravel. She tumbles out of her world and back, where time has flown by without her. Against her will, she slips away, leaving behind empty rooms.
Then Eleanor is torn from her world altogether—by a mysterious stranger, Mea, who reveals to Eleanor the weight of her family’s loss. Eleanor learns that her sister's death was not the first in her family—and unless Eleanor can master her strange new abilities, Esmerelda's may not be the last.