Since I was 8-years-old and given a green-covered composition book in school, I’ve written stories. I turned that first journal into a chapter book, “School Dayz,” about a plucky girl named Lucy who went on adventures with her friends and a pet turtle.

Since then, my writing has grown darker and twistier after discovering Agatha Christie and P.D. James paperbacks on my parents’ bookshelves. I’ve been hooked on mysteries ever since.

After graduating from Williams College, I didn’t think I could make a living writing fiction. So, I did the next best thing and became a journalist. I covered crime for The News & Observer in North Carolina. I wrote about celebrity donors, including Michael Bloomberg and James Michener, for The Chronicle of Philanthropy in Washington D.C. then moved on to covering celebrities, from Renee Russo to Tom Hanks, for People magazine.

After marrying a “cowboy” (my husband Ben from Wyoming), we moved to the Mountain West to raise our two children. I became the editor of our smalltown newspaper then moved on to freelance writing, penning a series on Wyoming authors like Alexander Fuller and C.J. Box.

Finally, I pulled my stack of creative writing notebooks out of the shadows and began writing mystery novels and short stories in full daylight — and never looked back.