I’m a writer and editor with two kids, a lot of household disorder, many books, a mischievous dog, lovely husband, and a sinking feeling that the word that best describes me right now is “harried.” I am so so thrilled that my first book, DREAMWOOD, a middle-grade fantasy, is out now from Putnam (Penguin).

A short bio

I was born in Berkeley, California. To my surprise, I live in Berkeley, California. I did take some side trips along the way.

• I grew up in Tucson, Arizona, with detours to New Mexico.
• I went to Smith College in Massachusetts, where I studied Greek and Latin and also French (what the heck), and spent a junior year abroad in Paris that was very super amusant.
• I moved to San Francisco, where I wrote about film, books, theater, technology, etc., etc.
• I’ve worked for a number of technology magazines, websites, and software companies like Netscape, Pets.com, NVIDIA, and HP. This is what I still do. Ask me about enterprise software!
• I have an MFA in writing from the University of Arizona, a degree that involved a somewhat crazy departure from San Francisco to go back to Tucson for two years.
• Somewhere I still have my membership card from the Cat Writers Association of America
• I obsess about health, Proust, “The Wire,” “Breaking Bad,” how to write (how to plot!), whether George RR Martin can pull it off, whether there’s anything new to say about vampires, whether I’m listening to too much rap, and how to keep deer out of the yard.