I have always been a voracious reader. For this, I lay the blame solely on my mother. Some of my fondest memories were of my mother reading to me each night. We didn’t read Goodnight Moon, oh no. We tackled books like The Jungle Book, Call of the Wild, Black Beauty, Aesop’s Fables, and The Swiss Family Robinson. Hefty tomes in hardcovers that weren’t going to be anywhere close to completion before my six-year-old-self fell asleep, night after night. My mother is no longer with me, but my love of books, and of reading, is her legacy.

Growing up, I spent many an hour in the library. Whether it was the steps of the reading well in my elementary school or the faded linoleum of the public library, I learned to appreciate, and eventually crave, the biblichor of these places. At home, my bookshelf was filled to the brim.

In my pre-teen and teen years, my love of reading took a more macabre turn. What can I say? I grew up in the era of 80’s B horror movies. R.L. Stine, Diane Hoh, and Christopher Pike started to slowly take over my bookcase, edging out the sweet pastels of my childhood. I loved these stories with their bright, garish covers and splattered fonts. Eventually, I graduated to reading some the of masters of horror: Stephen King, John Saul, and Dean Koontz. Monsters, both classic and human, spooks and spirits; these were my companions on a rainy, Sunday afternoon. While I enjoyed the jump scares of the cheesy film masterpieces of horror, there was nothing like vividly imagining the fear inside the print of a good horror novel.

That love of chills and thrills has stayed with me to this day. However, my reading ebbs and flows through multiple genres. I still enjoy a good scary novel, but I will also pick up an occasional historical romance or science fiction. My heart truly lies in urban fantasy and/or paranormal fiction though, combining my love for things that go bump in the night with the hope of a fairy tale happy ever after.

I live with my husband, and a plethora of four-footed furry critters, in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. I have an addiction to coffee, makeup, and an overuse of the word, ya’ll.