To begin with, my pronouns are she/they and my initials are TNT. I found comfort in books at an early age because kids teased me about my initials and how I “was gonna explode” whenever I got upset—and I got upset about a lot of things, cuz life ain’t easy for a little Greek girl who thinks the world should be fair.

But life was always fair in the stories I read. No matter what havoc was stirrin’ up in the real world, stories had their own sense of order—even if that meant following the creature you’d brought to life with grave-robbed body parts and lightning into the Arctic Circle and nearly-certain death in order to finally be a responsible parent.

Noticed there weren’t enough Queer happy endings when I got to college, though. Got upset about it. Called my mother to explode.

Since then, I’ve done a lot to improve my writing: got a BA in Creative Writing (along with a Minor in Flute Performance); participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time in 2012 (and did it nearly every year since); went to Japan and wrote a thesis about manga adaptation in the US; earned my MA in Writing and Book Publishing; worked with amazing mentors like Nicole Kimberling from Blind Eye Books, and Rachel Roberts and Jenny Blenk from Dark Horse Comics; took some screen writing courses from the Upright Citizens Brigade; and found talented writing partners to trade work and edits with.

My first publication was an unpaid personal essay in Bi Women Quarterly in 2014. It meant the world to me. The first story I sold was published by Improbable Press in 2021. I’m telling you this so you know that writing for a living is something you can do. It just takes time.

Having other skills and hobbies helps too. For example, I’m a second degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do with a ton of training in various weaponry and grappling—which makes me really good at writing action scenes, and terrible to watch action movies with (or at least that’s what my spouse tells me).

Life got a little screwy in 2020, but you find your way forward as best you can. Writing from the Oregon woods with my platonic life partner and my cat Marbles (whom I never call by name and dub “Gremlin” most of the time) can be paradise with the right story. I do my best to write stuff that makes me happy so the only exploding I do these days is blowing the minds of my readers.