Writing

Ever since reading Anne of Green Gables as a little girl, I knew I wanted to be a writer. Anne Shirley's buoyancy and wistfulness as she navigated friendships, struggles, and her passionate love of where she was from swept me off my feet and gave me the long-term goal of someday becoming an author of my own Anne of Green Gables. Anyone who has read L.M. Montgomery's captivating descriptions of Prince Edward Island will understand the beautiful worldscape she created for the reader. I lived half of my childhood vicariously wandering the bluffs and wooded byways of Prince Edward Island. The other half, I lived in Narnia…As one does.

I have boxes of unfinished (and very heartfelt) novels stashed away, starting with a love story I wrote in sixth grade about a young Joaquin Murrietta (a sort of Mexican-American Robin Hood figure) and a girl who lived in the Santa Ynez Valley right after it became the state of California. This was an end-of-the-year present for my teacher, who, I'm sure, was mystified by my enthusiastic and romantic tale.

In 1990, when I was fourteen, my family moved to Austria. My dad worked for what was then the Czechoslovakian government as an advisor for ageing resorts all over Slovakia. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the Czechoslovakian government was trying to re-focus itself to cater to a West German clientele. It was the meeting of east and west, a pivotal moment for a fourteen-year-old to absorb. These witnesses of a bygone era, elegant nineteenth-century spa towns with Soviet era overlays of cement and steel, and the stories I heard from their inhabitants awakened in me a love for history from which I have never recovered.

Since my teenage years, I've become a singer-songwriter, a musician, and an avid historian. My twin passions of history and writing fuel one another with deep dives into places and stories that fascinate me. I love people's stories. I love the mystery of life, and all it brings. I love making connections and watching a story emerge out of nothing. As a writer, my favorite thing is to research as thoroughly I can so that the story is evocative, accurate, and life-giving. Among other topics, I've enjoyed researching Russia in the 19th and 20th centuries, Central Asian and Middle Eastern histories, Georgian and Armenian histories, French and British history, and the history of women travelers in the 19th century, Native American and Californian history with special interest in Japanese-Americans and their experience on the Central Coast of California.

Available Books

Rusudan

RUSUDAN is speculative fiction set in early 2000s California and Medieval Georgia. Imaginative, lush, and character-driven, with elements of the fantastical. On a bookshelf, it might sit between WEYWARD and THE BEAR AND THE NIGHTINGALE

During a family crisis, lonely teenager Rusudan Solovei begins dreaming of the boy who once rescued her from drowning. Every night, he helps her navigate her real-life relationships, eventually becoming questionably indispensable: her secret best friend and lover.

Lucas Elliott, a boy with a dark history, just wants to live a normal life. But, to his frustration, he can't stop dreaming of Ruso. As their night-time friendship deepens, fragments of a captivating medieval world of Georgia, Armenia, and the steppes of Asia begin to emerge. Could Ruso and Lucas have known each other in another lifetime? Is reality bigger than it seems? Will their emotional attachment to one another affect their real lives? While Ruso attempts to individuate in the shadow of her celebrity parents, Lucas knows more than he reveals about both of their pasts. When Ruso suffers a significant loss, Lucas throws caution aside to meet her in real life. And the shadows of history come rushing to meet Ruso in a way she never imagined possible.

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