When I was 17, I wrote my first short story. As soon as I finished, I knew that I would never stop writing, and I never have. I have participate in National Novel Writing Month for 8 consecutive years, and “won” 7 of those years.

While I love all kinds of literature, science fiction holds a special place in my heart. I grew up reading Ray Bradbury and stories from the Twilight Zone. During my freshman year of college, my dad sent me a copy of The Martian Chronicles, and I fell in love with the Red Planet. In 2008, I began to connect with various NASA accounts on Twitter, attended the first NASA Tweetup at Jet Propulsion Labs in 2009, and met fascinating people who work on the Mars Rover, Phoenix Lander, and Mars Science Laboratory missions. I am privileged (and astounded!) to call many of these amazing individuals friends. They inspire me to keep writing about the planet that I love so much.

My goal is to write compelling science fiction that doesn’t rely on strange aliens, implausible futuristic tech, or intergalactic wars to be interesting. You won’t find artificial gravity in my novels, or green-skinned aliens from Orion, or a villain who wants to rule the Solar System. I write about human beings doing what human beings have always done: pushed back the boundaries of their world to find new places to call home.