A BIT ABOUT ME
HAVING BEEN BORN OF ARTFUL PARENTS
In December of 1996, I was born in Las Vegas, Nevada to a World Class Architectural Lighting Designer, who worked on such projects like the Stratosphere Tower in Vegas, and projects around the world in places like Hong Kong, and Johannesburg South Africa, and a Professional Photographer, who was not only commissioned to take pictures of some of my father's local work, as well as family, senior, and other various portraits, but also worked processing film at B&C camera, where she fixed other photographer's mistakes.
OUT OF THE BOX,
GET OUT OF THE BOX!
I was the third of five children: a middle child just like my father. Our family dynamics were such that I had two older sisters to look up to for what my successful future might be, as they are 17 and 14 years older than me, but was often the example for my younger siblings, since I was the oldest at home from the time I was four. Given my parent's professions, I grew up in a home where I was encouraged to be imaginative and creative, my parents fueling my curiosity with books and knowledge. I tried my hand at painting, drawing, writing, and photography. My parents supported me in all my talents, with one of my most vivid childhood memories being my father taking me to an art store to buy me some supplies.
THE ADVENTURE BEGINS
When I was nine, we moved to Fresno, California, which I viewed as an awesome new adventure. We lived in this cool apartment for a time, with a playground, this awesome creek that meandered around the apartments, and a swimming pool. Unfortunately, when we went on vacation we were robbed, resulting in a move to a rental home in a different part of Fresno. It was during this time that the idea of becoming a doctor really cemented in my head as what I wanted to be in life, but that I was also introduced to the YA spy genre as a style of books that I really enjoyed.
A ROYAL IDEA
In 2007, we moved to Mountain House, California, a suburb of Tracy, which is just outside of the San Fransisco Bay Area. I made friends at the K–8 I attended there, where we played games based on our imagination. Those games, paired with the fact that I had fallen in love with the house and community I lived in, inspired me to make my first attempt at a novel, which given the fact that I was a fifth-grader, failed. However, by the start of seventh grade, I had another idea, that my writing teacher allowed me to explore, which resulted in a very rough start to the book that has since become Royal Beginnings (March 2016).
SURVIVING THE CRAZINESS
After another move in 2010, from the suburb to the city proper, I attended John C. Kimball High School in Tracy, California, where I had another idea, which turned into the continuation of Alyx McLean's adventures, this time as a normal high school student back home in California. It was her story that got me through the next few years, between the uncertainty my father's unemployment, and the move from the city that had become my second hometown, a new school for eleven months during the 2012–2013 school year, and yet another move, this time back to Tracy. By writing her story, I was able to process my own feelings about the craziness that had become my life, and learn so much, not only about the character and her strength, but also myself and the strength I had.
FINALLY FINDING MY PATH
I was stubborn for a little while longer, Graduating from the High School I'd started at a semester early in December 2014. I then moved with my family to North Salt Lake, Utah. I finished Royal Beginnings the following July, on the iPad I bought with the money I'd earned from my job in Bountiful. In August of 2015, I started at the University of Utah as a Pre-Biology Major, still intending to be a doctor. After realizing I hated Biology, I switched to a French Major, torn between being an author, or the childhood dream of being a doctor. I self-published Royal Beginnings my second semester at the U, finally deciding the following semester that writing was what I loved, and declared as an English Major. Despite my many detours on my path to being an English Major, I discovered my English Major alone would not take me to the mandatory credits for my Bachelors, so I decided to declare as a Book Arts minor, knowing very little about it, but thinking it would fit in well with my major. I was shocked to discover it was an art (which I had come to say I hated) but stuck with it for the credits, falling in love with the form, and rediscovering my love for the arts, including jumping back into painting and photography.
A GLOBAL PANDEMIC
I graduated with my degree in December 2019, and with my first month of freedom, I decided I was finally going to use what I had learned from my degree to edit Royal Beginnings. I started to play with the idea of starting a publishing company, which I quickly shut down... almost as quickly as my post graduation plans went up in flames as a global pandemic shut down the world. By the end of the year, the pandemic had broken me down and I started a publishing company. Scattered Thoughts was then published on June 8th, 2021 as the first book from Battalion Press, and the second book by Aly Kay Tibbitts. By the end of 2021, I will have three published books!