- I didn't know that I wanted to be a writer.

I just knew I loved to read and I enjoyed making up stories and I ended up winning the short story contest when I was in fourth grade.

Our teacher said, everyone in the grade's gonna participate in young authors where you get to write and illustrate your own book.

That was mind blowing to me because up till then I didn't realize the names on the spines of books were real people.

The real people I knew worked at factories.

They were teachers, they were firefighters or they were soldiers.

So this idea that me, a regular person from Hope Well could write my own book, mind Blowing experience, I really went all in and I wrote a book called Giant Dinosaur Inside, and it's about a boy who pulls a Godzilla creature out of a cereal box and that creature goes on a rampage through the city.

I won the contest and from there I was like, wow, I'm the best writer in my grade.

Before that, I wasn't the best at anything.

I was probably in my early twenties before I realized you could really make money.

I got my Master's in fine Arts at Old Dominion.

I also did my undergrad at Old Dominion.

I was a mass communications major with an English minor and I finished undergrad in 2001.

Went back, started my masters in 2014 and finished that.

In 2017, I decided to start trying to sell my short stories sold the first one I ever went out with and didn't really have much success after that for many years, but I kept at it because it was better than my day job.

Every morning for like 10 years, I would get up at five 30 and write from seven before I went into the office and did my day job, kept making stories, started writing books.

They didn't really go anywhere, but I felt myself getting better and eventually I got good enough to sell more stories and eventually sell a novel and I haven't looked back since.

The first novel I sold was Fake id.

We sold it actually in 2011.

It published in 2014, and that was a young adult mystery about a boy in the Witness Protection Program.

His family moves to their fourth town in four years and the only friend he makes gets murdered, so he wants to use his street smarts to figure out who did it the same time I sold it.

I got laid off for my day job for the second time, so I never sought another job in corporate America after that.

I came to Hampton Roads in 1997.

When I came to ODU for undergrad after I graduated in 2001, I moved to Chesapeake.

The library I went to was the Greenbrier branch of the Chesapeake Public Library, the Chesapeake Public Library, particularly that branch made all the difference in the world of me selling my first book because they had a writer's group that would meet there called Sisters in Crime.

Sisters in Crime is a nationwide organization with local branches.

These are people who are passionate about writing usually crime, writing mysteries, things of that nature, and they would meet once a month.

I was able to work through early chapters of fake ID with that group and eventually get it to the point where I could get a literary agent and that literary agent was able to sell it to the major publisher that started in Chesapeake.

People often ask what my favorite novel is, and it always feels a little difficult because it's sort of like saying, what's your favorite kid if you have a bunch of kids?

I'm gonna name three.

I would say The Getaway, which is my dystopian horror novel from 2022, not So Pure and Simple, which is my coming of age comedy from 2019, and then the last last day of summer, which is my middle grade fantasy, the first of a four book series from 2019.

I say those three because I'm proud of them, but I also think they show the range of what I can do.

The getaway comes up a lot because there was a lot of buzz around it when it came out.

Don Cheadle's production company won the rights to possibly make a TV show out of it.

There was a situation with fake ID where the rights were bought by a producer named Seth Gordon.

He made the Goldbergs.

The Rights for the last last day of summer were with Lee Daniels before Kobe Bryant passed.

What I pieced together is his daughters must have been reading a book or two of mine.

He followed me on Twitter and then dmd me saying he liked the book Spin My Mystery novel from 2019.

He made a really nice post about spin.

His people talked to my agent.

Unfortunately nothing came together before the tragic helicopter crash.

I got one of his books on my bookshelf behind me that he sent me and signed, so I, that's something I'll cherish forever.

I was able to write a book for Star Wars called Sanctuary, a Bad Batch novel, which is based on the bad batch television show that ran for three seasons on Disney plus working with Star Wars.

That's a franchise that's been in my life as long as I can remember.

So to get the call to work in that universe and write something that's considered canon, meaning it's a permanent part of the big story, it makes you feel like you've made all the right steps.

Star Wars is pretty much an established country at this point if you were to put it in real world terms 'cause they've got their own military history, own religious history and so forth, and so writing in the universe, I went into it thinking I would have more restrictions, but they're actually pretty open about you having ideas and they'll tell you like, Hey, you can't do this because it would contradict something else.

In Cannon, it's interesting because you start to learn a bunch of things about something you thought you already knew a lot about, but outside of those little nuances, the story team was really open to my ideas and I would say like 95% of what I pitched for the story, they were totally fine with it.

Thank you for coming and picking the book.

I hope you enjoy, like I'm, I'm a bad, obviously I'm a bad batch fan, too obvious, so I try to do right.

So this year I am the inaugural writer in residence at William and Mary, and so that position pretty much makes me an ambassador for the Library, for the Arts for Literacy, the special collections that they have at William and Mary.

I do events where I bring in some of my friends who are writers, editors, agents, and we do webinars where we sort of get behind the scenes of publishing for the people in the William and Mary community and the public who have some interest in writing or publishing or the other aspects of the publishing industry.

And also shed a light on some of our Virginia writers, particularly some of the women writers that you may not be aware of, are connected to the university.

I did a webinar with Lee Boudreaux.

She edited Perceval Everett James, which won pretty much all the major awards last year.

Being able to reach out to people like that who are connected with the university, it's amazing.

I don't take this for granted.

I know this.

This is not a career that a lot of people get to have, even though a lot of people want it, and so I'm appreciative of everyone who over the many years who've read the books.

I love meeting the young readers and older readers, and I enjoy the fact that I'm able to do this and provide for my family.

So thankful to everyone out there who's paid attention and wants to see more.