The Author
Strange as it might seem, it's actually harder to write about myself than to make a whole bunch of things up. Hey, the making things up is what I'm used to! Maybe we should start at the beginning...A Little History I was born in Toronto, Canada around the end of 1980, and I grew up there with my parents, my younger brother, and various cats. I've always loved stories--when I was little, I used to beg my dad to read my favorite books "with the voices," which meant he'd put on a different voice for each character. There was nothing better! So unsurprisingly it wasn't long before I starting making up my own stories. |
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| At first, they were My Little Pony tales dictated to my mom, who wrote them down sentence by sentence and stapled the pages into "books" that I then illustrated. Once I learned how to write, I scrawled out page after page of adventure stories, frequently involving cats, and often magic. Fantasy, science fiction, and the supernatural have fascinated me all my life, which is probably why those genres are what most interest me today. There's so much freedom and possibility in pushing beyond the boundaries of what we know is real. | |
   Megan at 5, 11, and 16 |
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A Writer Grows Up I finished my first (very bad) novel when I was 14, and started submitting short stories to magazines around the same time. I was lucky to have teachers who encouraged me, and resources to draw on getting started in the publishing industry. My first fiction publications were in a national magazine for young adult writers called In 2 Print. Sadly, it's no longer around--it was so encouraging to me to take that first step toward becoming a professional author. |
| I kept writing, and I kept submitting, and around the time I was finishing up my degree in psychology at York University, I'd had several short story sales to ezines, print magazines, and anthologies. (You can check out the more recent ones here.) But all along I knew novels were what I really wanted to focus on, so I could not have been more excited when an agent offered to represent Give Up the Ghost and my book publishing journey really began. | |
And here we are today... I'm still living in Toronto, now with my husband and three cats of my own. By mornings I write; by afternoons I tutor children and teens with special needs. When I'm not doing either, I'm reading everything I can get my hands on (about an equal mix of YA and adult fiction, with the occasional nonfiction title thrown in), learning Fut Gar kung fu, and planning my next overseas exploration. |
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I've traveled to Britain, China, Italy, Japan, France, The Netherlands, and Turkey, and you can see photo records of my journeys below: The Italy Trip Part One ~ Part Two
Want to know more? Feel free to contact me! |
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