I’m hoping to participate in the very selective #PitchWars process this year and potential mentees are encouraged to share a little bit about themselves on their blogs in what is affectionately coined #PimpMyBio. For those of you who know me, most of this information probably isn’t new. For those of you who don’t, welcome!
Fun Stuff
A #novelaesthetics teaser for my #PitchWars YA Fantasy manuscript, A THOUSAND YEARS TO WAIT
(Disclaimer: Only two of these images are mine. I don’t claim rights to the others!)
What is all this about? Well…
At 18, Moreina di Bianco is a young healer who believes in medicine, not magic, even while possessing a second sight she can’t fully explain. So when a talisman and a thousand-year-old prophecy choose Reina to reawaken an ancient magic and find a way to end a war, she must reconcile her beliefs and learn to master the unknown magic.
Reluctant to accept help, Reina’s only company on her journey is her estranged and mysterious childhood friend and a dashing captain who claims to be her protector. There’s just one problem with her new companions. They, too, are featured in the prophecy. But what woman wants a suitor, let alone two, when she’s busy defeating an evil general, ending a war, finding the true king, and rightfully seating him on the throne?
Random ‘Stuff’ About A THOUSAND YEARS TO WAIT
Reina would really get along with Nadia from The Forgetting (Sharon Cameron) or Mae from White Hart (Sarah Dalton). The three of them could probably be best friends…though they might butt heads from time to time. They’re all pretty headstrong. She also has a lot in common with Feyre from A Court of Thorns and Roses (Sarah J. Maas), but killing stuff isn’t her thing. In fact, she’s a vegetarian.
About Me
An ever changing chameleon, I seem to fit in both everywhere and nowhere at once. I grew up on Long Island, but moved to Pennsylvania with my family when I was 10, making me a lover of both indoor and outdoor fun. Theater, art, culture? Yes! Hiking, camping, and horses? Let’s!
I love outdoor photography (Hey – that’s a combo of art, camping, and hiking!) and I even blogged about one of my most ambitious travels – a cross-country trip over the course of just 3 weeks. (Two years have passed since that trip and I’m still dreaming about it.)
But my love of art and travel didn’t stop me from also pursuing a love of science and I have an undergraduate degree in Marine Biology with minors in Chemistry and Psychology. (I also earned a Master’s in Business Administration as a parent of two young children just to prove to myself that I could.) But maybe what I love most is actually the world in all its forms, and perhaps its why I’ve never been content to stay in just one place doing just one thing.
My ever-changing career has taken an interesting path to say the least. My titles have included:
- Microbiologist
- Pharmaceutical Technical Writer
- Mom to 2 girls
- Animal Adoption & Kennel Technician
- Animal Shelter Administrative Director
- Marketing Director
- Freelance Writer
- And always, always – Aspiring Author
The reason for my leaving any of these jobs was not because I didn’t enjoy them or because I wasn’t very good at them. (Quite the contrary, in fact!) Rather, it was because I always felt that there was something else I *should* be doing, something else that needed my attention, somewhere else that I should be fitting in.
In some of these jobs, I felt as though I had almost made it, that I almost assimilated, but there was always some small part of me that knew I was only fooling myself. I could “almost” fit in anywhere, but it wasn’t until I joined the writing community online that I began to feel as though perhaps I had finally found my tribe. A misfit among misfits, and I couldn’t feel more at home! If you, too, are a misfit writer and bibliophile, I hope you’ll find me on Twitter and say hello!
And Now – Random Trivia
My Loves:
- Landscape photography
- Hiking
- Travel
- Music
- Good NY pizza
- Dark chocolate (Seriously, what is life without chocolate?)
- Books (Duh…) – particularly well-done fantasies that take me deep into new worlds
- My children & my husband (Duh, again… This is a given, of course. I’m so, so very lucky!)
My Current Obsessions:
- Planning vacations I can’t take
- #resist with @botresist
- Sweetgreen’s harvest bowl (Yum!)
Things I despise (not necessarily in this order):
- Narcissists (I worked for one for a long time – never again!)
- Willful ignorance
- Cancer (The disease, not the astrological sign. We crabs need to stick together.)
- That Thing currently occupying the White House (See also: first bullet point.)
Things I think you should know:
- Myers-Briggs: INFJ
- I will hold my bladder as long as humanly possible if it means I can avoid using a porta-potty.
- I love stories about time travel and/or reincarnation (Maybe why I resist the porta-potty—too many past lives without modern day plumbing?)
- I don’t shy away from hard work, and Persistence is my middle name. (Actually, I don’t have a middle name, but if I did, this would be it.)
One More Thing:
(I debated adding this section, but I think it’s important enough that it should be included. I want to make sure that anyone who wants to work with me also knows where I stand on #OwnVoices.)
I’m not an #OwnVoices writer. I don’t come from the marginalized community and I can’t tell the stories that should be told by #OwnVoices writers. I am, however, a strong supporter of diversity and equal opportunity and will do whatever I can do to help advocate diversity in the publishing industry. So, a shoutout to my many writer friends from the marginalized communities who are making a difference every single day by using their voices to tell the stories that need to be told! Thank you for sharing your story! The world needs it. I need it!
How I picture Reina, Quinn, and Niles:
L. Ryan Storms 
Love all the photos!! 🙂 Good luck in Pitchwars! May the odds be ever in our favor.
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That picture of you is great! And I did learn one new thing about you – you don’t have a middle name?! And I too plan vacations that are not possible lol
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Friends used to think I just hated my middle name so much that I didn’t want to share it with anyone. It took forever to convince people that I *really* didn’t have a middle name!!
And…oh…sweet vacation I shall never take again, how I long for thee!
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Love your post and wishing you all the luck in PW this year. I too am a fan of Sweetgreen’s harvest bowl (yum) and think cancer sucks (the same time I got The Fault in Our Stars, my best guy friend got diagnosed – he’s okay now thank goodness but I do NOT remember that book at all because I cried through the whole thing). I am an #ownvoices writer for the book I am pitching but you’re so right we can’t tell allll the stories and must cheer everyone on. 🙂 I’m a Taurus 😉 And good NY pizza is the best!!!
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P.S. My story with my middle name is I thought I had one, signed all my “stories” R.L. 😉 and at 17 went to the DMV to find out my middle name was never legalized. I told my mom I was having an identity crisis and begged people to call me Rachel ‘Queen Elizabeth’ for a week LOL!!!! 😉
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LOL! I love everything about this. And you are hereby dubbed Queen Elizabeth for the remainder of PitchWars, your highness.
(Bows low while taking my leave.)
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SO glad your friend is doing well now! We had a scare with my husband just recently and he’s still on a long journey back to health, but the outlook is good right now. I *cannot* imagine reading The Fault in Our Stars while he went through treatment. Oh my… There’d be tears! Lots of tears! Good luck to you in PitchWars, too! I look forward to checking out your bio soon. I’m a slacker on reading up, but I plan to catch up over the next few days! (I swear!)
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Loved knowing you a little more today. All the very best and may you come out victorious!
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I’m INFJ too! *high five*
Thanks for adding that bit about #OwnVoices, too. Although I’m an Asian American woman, I write stories that interest me. Sometimes I sprinkle in a bit about my family’s culture (especially when it comes to food) but for the most part, I identify as an American, and I don’t necessarily want my stories to be all about the struggles we face. Plus, I’m more of a fantasy writer (like you?) and I feel that #OwnVoices is mostly a contemporary thing?
Anyway, best of luck in Pitch Wars!
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Hooray for INFJs! And I really debated on putting the #OwnVoices thing in my bio. I don’t want to seem like I’m just saying it because it’s very “in” to be an advocate, but it’s *really* important to me.
And even if you are writing fantasy, you are still relying on your own culture as background. It’s not that I couldn’t write an Asian American character (and I totally get that you are American and identify as such!), but I would need to do a TON of research on everything about that character’s life because things are different from what your character will eat to their outlook on school/work to their thoughts about dating. I could tell you all about Italian food and how my family ate pasta twice a week most weeks when I was growing up, with my mom making homemade sauce every time. I could tell you about how my grandparents bickered nonstop and how it usually ended with an exclamation in Italian, or how my grandfather would pluck his guitar and sing in Italian, but that’s “normal” for me, so it wouldn’t take much to write an Italian-American family growing up in the suburbs of Long Island. You, on the other hand, could probably write a character that has Asian culture with your eyes closed and that’s big, even when just incorporating that into a fantasy work. Ultimately, fantasy is just another spin on reality and fantasy is too often white-washed (unless race is incorporated as a major element of the plot somehow) and I’d like to see more diverse characters over all. It’d be nice to see more ethnicities incorporated into fantasy writing and it’s not something I, as a white American, can do! So, I applaud you because you don’t have to do a contemporary #OwnVoices story to help get diversity into publication! “Sprinkling” it into your fantasies is a great way to get readers to start thinking about and accepting diversity without even being consciously aware that they are doing it.
Keep writing! And good luck in PitchWars! Whether I’m “in” or not, I’ll be cheering for all of you!
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That’s really well put, thank you 😀 If you were interested in writing something more contemporary, I would love to see some of that detail of your family. It’s the little things that make them so much more real.
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Loved this post, Ryan! And A Thousand Years To Wait sounds amazing! Best of luck with pitch wars!
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Thank you so much! I still think the best part about PitchWars is meeting so many great writer-friends! Writing can be so lonely. Connecting with other writers makes it less so!
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