I have been tagged by Alison Haines on twitter https://twitter.com/AuthorAlisonH to do a 20 Questions Writer Tag and I’m super excited! Thank you so much for tagging me, Alison!

1. What type of writing do you do?

I write young adult and new adult fiction for a long running book series, The Shadows

2. What genres and/or topics do you write about?

I write primarily Science Fiction with heavy fantastical elements over the more futuristic tones. For the most part, I focus more on fantasy that is set in the future.

3. How long have you been writing?

I have been writing The Shadows since I was 13 and before that I had been writing and planning a superhero series that I scrapped as soon as I started The Shadows. That series was awful, and Shadows has taken over my life.

4. Are you published?

Not yet

5. What was the first story you ever wrote?

Outside of school projects the first story I ever wrote was about a benevolent Alien race reaching out to humanity, and after their arrival several groups of female protagonists discovered they were from various planets which the Alien race came from. As a child I used to think this series was awesome and detailed, I started writing it on my dad’s then new dell laptop, despite the broken screen and the swirly font selection. At 10 pages long I declared the first book done.

6. Why do you write?

I’ve always had a very overactive imagination, using my backyard and my many siblings as inspiration for writing. For years with my superhero universe I told myself, “you need to write this down!” I even made space in my doodle notebooks that said “Start writing” so that when I got to that page in the notebook I would be forced to start writing. When I did start writing I could never stop, I just love putting my ideas down to paper so that other people can read them without telling me I’m crazy, at least not to my face.

7. How do you find time to write?

I’ve devoted every bit of freetime I’ve had since I was 13 to writing. I was homeschooled so that was a lot of time. But even when I was working a 40 hour week in Scotland, I still devoted every moment of my breaks to scribbling something down. For me I find time by just making myself be in front of my documents whenever I can.

8. When and where are the best times to write?

For some reason my most productive writing times are between 11pm and 1am, something about everyone being asleep makes it easier to focus. I write mostly in my bed, but I have a small workspace that surrounds me with inspiration .

9. Favorite food/drinks while writing?

I’m addicted to all manner of tea, and without it my writing mojo goes out the window. Earl grey is my life juice and Sleepytime is my creative drug. Other than that, I don’t really snack while writing.

10. Your writing playlist?

Indie pop and country, Aurora Aksnes, Lindsey Stirling,  Peter Gundry, Thomas Bergersen, Celtic Woman and many other instrumental artist. I also have a youtube playlist I made for writing that inspires me. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLThyib1IpivI_EnHaDtnFC6kAGufobmAA

11. What do family/friends/loved ones think of you writing?

For the most part my family has never read my writing, partly due to not having time and not being interested in reading scifi, but I have a nice hovel of friends of love it.

12. Parts of writing you enjoy the most?

I love going through all my books and just reading them, I write to enjoy was I write, and reliving some of who climactic moments to enjoy them as a reader makes me so happy.

13. Parts of writing you find challenging?

Catching all those typos and overused words. I am the typo queen especially when I’m in the zone. I can get all the ideas across but the scenes get littered with left out “ed”s and “s”s as well as too many “quickly”s and “grimaced”s

14. What do you write with and on?

I’m a stickler for Microsoft Word, I love all the formatting powers and how quickly I can get down all my scenes. However the only downside is the terror of losing writing since I don’t save immediately to the cloud. I’ve lost five paragraphs in between autosaves, which shocked my family, not because I lost writing but because in the two minutes between autosaves, I wrote five paragraphs.

15. How do you overcome writer’s block?

Just write! If it comes out bad just write through it! I usually get writer’s block at boring scenes that I’m not looking forward to writing. The dialogue will feel forced, the descriptions bland, but I can always go back and edit them.

16. How do you motivate yourself to write?

What’s important to me is just to keep writing. So I don’t struggle to get motivation to write. What I struggle with is editing. Telling myself to stop writing, and to go back to edit earlier writing. So I have 13 unedited books and the 14th is hogging all my attention when I’m supposed to be editing FH

17. Authors who inspire you as a writer?

I don’t do a lot of reading anymore but I would still say the Authors who inspire me the most are C.S. Lewis, Gail Carson Levine, and Christopher Paolini. Their books were what made me want to write fantasy and create worlds.

18. Books that inspire you as a writer?

When I do read its mostly for guilty pleasure and obsession. So I find long series’ I can get attached to. I love Star Wars books, How to Train Your Dragon, and Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles.

19. Best advice you’ve gotten as a writer?

I don’t know, I haven’t really met any accomplished writers who’d be willing to share their wisdom. I’ve been pretty on my own. So here’s my best advice to anyone who reads this: Just keep writing. Doesn’t matter if it sucks, doesn’t matter if you don’t like what you write, because if you just get it on paper, your idea has successfully made it out of your brain and into the world.

20. Writing goals this year

I hit a lot of my goals in the past year. I set up my blog, got more active on instagram, and more importantly, I’ve worked really hard to get the fund together for publishing. I have an editor now, a self-publishing company, and I finally finished rewriting The Shadows: Fire’s Hope. With everything ready to go, and editing underway, my computer has decided to die so I’m in the process of re budgeting and preparing myself for the loss of a computer. I’m shopping for a new computer which I hope to get in January 2018 if my current laptop doesn’t hold out. After that, it’s back to editing and working through getting the funds for self-publishing.