Q from kalypsowolfe: When did you know that you wanted to be an author/work on the publishing business? Also, how did you discover Wattpad?

A: Honestly, I stumbled into the publishing industry on accident. Three times. Officially, I started as a librarian working part-time at my local library after college. I needed a job and they needed help with social media, so it was the perfect fit. While I was there, I began working in collection development (aka buying new books for the library) and went to my first conference with OverDrive — that awesome app that lets you download ebooks for free from the library — and loved it.

When I moved to Nashville, I left the publishing industry to work for an iPhone app. However, shortly after I started, I ended up finding a Craigslist ad for a publisher that needed help with social media. Once again, it was the perfect fit.

I started in January, and by February they'd promoted me to the Director of Marketing for the entire publishing company. I was in charge of 3,000+ titles, and I'd never really worked in that side of publishing before. I went to Book Expo America, I worked with countless amazing authors, and I loved every second of it. However, I was brand new to the industry. I hated being the director of an entire department because I felt like I didn't know enough. I left to go work for a different company (not in publishing) so I could learn more about marketing.

Six months later, I received an email while I was on the treadmill. A literary publicity firm based in Austin, TX wanted to hire me to be their digital marketing director. I took the job, loved every second of it, and got to work with authors and publishers all over the United States — and internationally — while traveling to different conferences and learning everything I could about publishing.

While I was there, I happened to learn about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) from one of my best friends and wrote my first book. I'd been writing my entire life — songs, poems, and screenplays — but I didn't expect I'd fall in love with writing books. I was so wrong.

I discovered Wattpad in February 2016. I was reading Buzzfeed at work (whoops), and I saw an article on "21 Completely Engrossing Fanfictions You Won't Be Able to Stop Reading." I'd never read fanfiction before, but there was a Loki fanfic by yourmybeautifulsoul listed in the article and I checked it out. I *devoured* that fanfic, and I read the entire SIX BOOK series in less than a week. You can probably even find my first comments in the text somewhere. (And the author of that series is now a close friend of mine! If you're reading this, heyyyyyy. Text me!)

From there, I decided I wanted to write my own fanfic just for fun, The Ides of July, and it exploded unexpectedly. Now, I have the entire Loki series, several other fanfics, and multiple original books — including Fragile (now published) and Followed.

I haven't looked back since!