I began writing at the age of nine. By the age of twelve I was a published poet, and on my sixteenth birthday I accepted a five-year journalism internship for a daily newspaper in Phoenix, Arizona. By the age of eighteen, I was a contributing writer to a weekly column titled Insight.

In the early 90's, I moved to Los Angeles and flipped the script to write several screenplays and teleplays. In 1995, I was honored by the Walt Disney Fellowship Program and selected as one of four finalists from a pool of thousands for my screenplay titled The Skin I'm In.

Okay, now that you have taken in the scenic part of the trip--this is where the writer hits turbulence. For you will find that every journey has its share of pot holes and construction in progress delays. In 1995 my career came to a screeching halt when I surrendered to what I refer to as "The Great Depression." I sunk to "a low" that almost seemed unfathomable to recover from. I stopped eating. I stopped writing. Stopped pitching my stories. Stopped believing. And most of all--I "stopped" destiny. It was then that I knew I was at the end of the road. Now that's good and bad. It's bad because the end is the end and you could die at the end, OR you can get creative and come up with a new way to begin again.

My life changed forever in the spring of 1997. Single and alone, I gave birth to a baby girl and shortly thereafter, gave birth to myself. It's amazing how someone so small can persuade you to become so big and involved in life again.

Four weeks after the birth of my child I got down on my knees and asked God for redemption and more importantly, a second chance. That very day I began working on my debut novel Rising (St. Martin's Press, Jan. 2003), a raw tale of incest and redemption hailed by Ebony Magazine as the "Survival anthem of the year." I wrote my first novel almost in its entirety during my lunch break at work. It took me three years to complete the project.

In the interim, I have gone on to purge myself of all that God, time and destiny will allow. Upcoming projects include three novels: Crave (March 2004); Choke (2005) and 19 Floors (2006) as well as the screenplay adaptation of Rising. In 2003, I launched the Young Mentors Program, which provides young, gifted writers encouragement and a mentor. 2003 also saw the birth of A Life Less Ordinary, a program designed to motivate and inspire one to a life less ordinary. This program was originally launched in Group Homes and Shelters for Abused Children in the Los Angeles area and has been since adapted for high schools, colleges and universities throughout the country. I am also a competing Slam Poet who performs regularly throughout the Los Angeles area.

So, this is my bio. It says in part what I have done, but just between you and me, it doesn't matter whether you remember what I've done--my only hope is that you won't forget who I am. And who am I? Well, that's the easy part, I'm just a simple chick trying to make good on a second chance.