My obsession with storytelling started when I was a child, but I began trying to write books in earnest in high school with my very first novel, a pirate fantasy space opera (the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie had just come out, alongside the Episodes 1-3 of Star Wars). Was the novel terrible? Probably, but it sure was fun.

I dabbled in writing off and on, always chasing new ideas but never finding the time to write. I worked at a sketchy horse rescue in my teens where we were generally unsupervised and did whatever we wanted. There was a large, white male turkey named Tom who had been a house turkey before he was surrendered, and he used to chase us around the field trying to get our attention.

I learned how to scuba dive and was obsessed with the movie Titanic, as was every self-respecting young millennial girl. I went to college to become a veterinarian, hated it, changed to fine art and then moved to France for a year to “learn French.”

This was the year when there were massive protests in Paris about immigration laws and whatnot, and about halfway through the year all the students and teachers went on strike and never came back. While I was there, I wrote several stories inspired by the cathedral of Clermont-Ferrand, which was made of black volcanic rock.

Once I was back stateside, I realized that an art degree would be a “useless waste of money” unless I wanted to work in a museum, so I dropped out and got a retail job to pay off the whole “living in France for a year” thing.

Dumbest decision of my life (so far).

Right around the time of my fourth dead-end job, I discovered a little book called

Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer and . . .

BOOM!

My obsession with Mormon history was born. It combined two things I already loved: cowboys and weird religious history, with a sprinkling of true crime. Last year I wrote the first draft of Deseret Dawn and haven’t looked back.

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