After I wrote my first poem, I was hooked. I didn’t know what it was that first drew me in, but I could never pull away from writing ever since then. It was in the summertime, and it was on my dad’s laptop. I was about thirteen years old writing on my family’s deck.

 

I wrote that first poem, which I called “Assassinator,” and I believe I still have it somewhere on a floppy drive. I was sitting there, and I remember it well, and I was overlooking my backyard as I wrote it.

 

Something felt good inside when I wrote at that table, and I’ve been infatuated with words ever since that summer day. I kept writing through high school and all through college at Kean University where I earned my B.A. in English with a writing concentration.

 

As I got older, I evolved to longer works: poetry to flash, flash fiction to short stories. I compiled chapbooks, struggled through short story collections, and then I read one book that forever changed my writing life.

 

Before Jac Jemc’s My Only Wife—the loveliest book I’ve ever read—I never had an interest in writing longer pieces. But after I read it, I had that epiphany: I knew I could do it and started soon after.

 

Ever since then, I’ve been working on novels: ideas, prep-time, trying to learn characters and their personal stories is all worth it to me. After seven and a half years of a nine-to-five, I left that job to pursue my writing full-time.

 

I mostly write literary fiction, which I like to categorize as being strangely sad and/or unusual. If my work is none of that, then it’s wholeheartedly not me.

 

I still live in New Jersey where I grew up, and I can still walk outside to that very same deck where I wrote my first poem. And when I really think about it, maybe I do know what first drew me to the world of writing.

 

It was definitely the words, and I love words so much. Writing is something I’ll do for the rest of my life.