I thought my dream of being a writer came when I was in sixth grade, when Mrs. Carroll held a writing competition among the English classes and I entered. She gave me back my entry with her favorite phrases underlined in purple ink and a note that said, "You have a gift. If you decide to write, people will read it."
But as we were unpacking in our new house, I came across a spiral notebook labeled "Sara's Secret Journal Shh!" from when I was eight. And in it, I found story after story I'd written—ghosts, witches, plagues, imaginary dog friends—each carefully illustrated and labeled (for the voracious reader who went searching for this 'secret journal', I suppose).
And among the stories, little recaps of my daily life, and one entry titled, "My Future I Hope."
I've always wanted to be a writer. In high school, I wrote novels serially, one chapter a night (a frantic pace I'll never recreate). I'd print the pages, staple them together, and bring them to my first-period class to hand to a friend, who'd read and write notes in the margins. She'd pass the chapters to the next friend, who'd notate in a different color and dutifully pass it along as well. By the end of the day, the chapter was back in my hands with beta readers' leading questions, searing comments, furious scribbles, "tags" of one another.
Buoyed up by their feedback, I'd write a new chapter on the family computer that night, and the cycle continued, book after book.
When talk turned to college and what would make money someday, it was clear being an author wasn't the path. I mean, writing fiction? In this economy?
I wrote press releases. I wrote website copy. I wrote social media posts and punchy ad one-liners and brochure blurbs and "A Letter from the CEO" and anything else that paid. Eventually I managed other people who wrote and created, and I only wrote emails and meeting agendas and three-year strategic plans and anything that fit in an Excel cell.
I won awards. I got promoted. I ran a team of twenty-five people and earned a VP title and became a 30-year-old, female executive at a software company. A very successful career, and one I was very grateful for. Lots of people's dream.
But "I hope that my future will go like this: I want to be a writer and an illustrator too."
Like an insane person, I quit my job. I put a desk in my library with a laptop and a blinking cursor on a blank page, and I wrote.
In a year, I wrote six books. I sent them off to beta readers and revised; I commissioned character art; I sent them off to editors and revised; I started building agent query lists; I had a dream about a more interesting magic system and revised.
And now I'm publishing the first of those books, A King's Trust, on March 25, 2025. And I hope that my future will go like this: I want to be a NYT-Bestselling author of fantasy, romance, and dystopian books that celebrate people of all kinds, that entertain and delight, that wreak havoc on my readers' emotional state, that ask hard questions.
Want to help me make the dream come true? Here's some actions you can take:
Sign up for my newsletter
Request a free early copy of A King's Trust and write a review
Preorder the book (preorders open first week of March)
😭❤️😭 Just sobbing and smiling because of how proud I am, nbd