In college, I stumbled into the world of creative writing during the fall semester of my senior year. I was on track to complete my business major that following spring, but I decided to enroll in a poetry writing class just for fun. Well, thanks to the work of poets Octavio Paz and Pablo Neruda, as well as poets/memoirists Mary Karr and Maya Angelou, one—or all nine—of the Greek muses smacked me alongside the head and suddenly, I found myself counting in iambs and dactyls as opposed to dollars and cents (or, as my mother would recommend its spelling: sense).

Once I finished my undergraduate degree, I was accepted into the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing program at Arizona State University, where I continued to write, study, and keep my student loan payments in deferment with Sallie Mae. While in graduate school, I fell in love with the works and writing styles of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Raymond Chandler, and from there on out, I knew I wanted to publish murder mysteries.

And now, seven years later, here I sit typing at my desk, gazing at the tower of bestselling murder mystery books on my left and eyeing that really good cup of coffee on my right.