I was born and raised on the Central Coast of California, but for all of the perfect sunny days I adore stormy weather and consequently find it in my writing often.

 

It was on the sandy shores of Dillon Beach that I first began writing a novel in my grandparents' trailer. I was 13 years old. That novel will never see the light of day and now lives a prisoner in my oldest Google Drive folder, but we all start somewhere. It is because of that trip that I love the smell of paper, especially old and mildewy paper, I think cows make great company for writing, and I prefer thrift stores with a used-literature section.

 

I've since traded notebooks for a computer, having never been able to keep up with my own thoughts, and determinedly switched to a program with an auto-save feature in high school (for reasons you may be wise to guess). I've also developed calluses on my wrists from writing "too" often and for "too" long. I admit it's become one of my favorite features about myself, if anyone asks, like how some people can wiggle their ears.

 

I feel a special romance for horror, and I mean the dark, hungering, occultish kind, as well as a strangely antithetical but appropriate love of writing gritty realism about farms. My soulmate is fantasy: the stories of things which I will never find here, but ever will on the page. (I love poetry as well, but no poor soul need read that.) I read a quote somewhere that validates the importance of fantasy in my life: if non fiction is learning through facts, fiction is learning through imagination.

 

I have been used as an adjective in writing workshops, which is a fun way to be memorialized:

'A hundred striped umbrellas are pitched up like carny tents, and out tumble children, children upon colorful children cartwheeling from the shade of their tents to the water.'

That's what I wrote.

"Well." The professor paused for effect. "That's very Kathryn, isn't it?"

 

As mentioned, I do have a cat named Pudding. She's brilliant. There are other cats, but she is mostly mine. RIP my angel.