Personal History - Choices and Influences

What were the hardest choices you ever had to make?

Trump vs. Clinton...an incredibly hard and complicated choice.

What person really changed the course of your life by something he/she did?

My sister-in-law Sarah Eden, and I don't think I've ever mentioned it to her, or anyone really.

I always wanted to write, ever since I was a small child, and I was just about to give up on writing, because I didn't feel that the climate of the culture would accept anything I wrote. I don't do 'edgy and gritty' very well, and everything I saw seemed to be going in that direction.

After Sarah married my brother, she started writing these historical romance novels, and she started succeeding at it, in a big way.

Her example gave me a lot of encouragement and hope that I could be myself, and still find success and fulfillment in the public sphere as a writer, and that it was okay to even call myself a writer, which I had a hard time doing that before.

In that same vein, Stephanie Meyer as well. Her story 'Twilight', while maybe not technically the best story ever written, spoke to me emotionally very deeply in a critical way I'd never been able to tap into before. I left the movie in a daze, read the book (all the books), and proceeded to write my own novel, 'Sanctuary'. It wasn't the only input I used on that novel, but those two experiences were the catalyst for me.

And of course, I have to mention my mother. Her influence was and continues to be transformative for me. Glad to still have her around, as of this writing, and (hopefully) for a long time to come.

Do you remember any advice or comments that had a big impact on how you lived your life?

Don't remember anything in detail, but there's been a lot of it in my life.

I'm very into self-help books, talks, seminars - read and listen to them all the time, and I internalize a lot of it. I also do a lot of scriptural and religious reading, and that impacts me daily in a lot of little ways.

If you could change something about yourself, what would it be?

Eat less sugar - I just feel better when I reel it in. Working on that right now, in fact.