As a child, my family was briefly homeless, on the run from my father’s demons. We ended up in a remote New Mexican village with no stop lights and something like two paved roads. I loved it. Scaring up bears in the dumpsters. Chasing buffalo out of the backyard.

One thing led another, and I wound up in Hollywood, thinking I wanted to be a screenwriter. I earned a BFA from Loyola Marymount University and was eventually a Screenwriting Lab Fellow at Film Independent. They say it’s a tough business to break into, but for me, I never felt like I belonged. I never found my people.

So, I went to London where I lived with a couple of writers and poets. We survived on store-brand biscuits and cheap pints of bitter. That’s when I turned to the art of essays and nonfiction. When my visa ran out, I headed to Colorado where I worked as a freelance journalist and earned money as a marketer for small businesses and startups.

Writing was always the goal and somehow I decided that if I wanted to breakout, I needed to do something big. So, I found some sponsors and set off to hike the length of New Zealand (1,800 miles). Writing about that experience got me into the University of East Anglia in England, where I earned an MA in creative nonfiction.

I wrote for publications like BBC Travel, Sierra Magazine, and Hinterland Nonfiction. I got promoted to Director of Communications at a growing nonprofit. And I started learning French.

They say that studying another language rewires your brain. Well, my neural pathways opened up and I realized two things: I wanted to live in France and I wanted to start writing fiction again.