It started with a tiger.
In third grade, my teacher assigned us to write and illustrate a story. I wrote about an African girl trying to save a tiger in the wild. Spoiler: she saved it. My teacher bound all the stories, gave them covers, and shelved them in the school library right next to all the other books.
That was the moment everything clicked.
I wasn’t just writing for myself anymore. I was sharing my story with everyone.
After that, I couldn’t stop. I started writing stories and passing them out to my friends at recess. No internet, no Microsoft Word — just hand-written pages and a crew of classmates asking what happens next? I’d go home, write more chapters, put my friends in the story, and bring it back the next day.
By fifth grade, when we had to write what we wanted to be in the elementary school yearbook, I didn’t hesitate: Writer.
While everyone else wrote down doctors, lawyers, astronauts, and musicians, I already knew.
But then life happened.
The voices got louder. Do this, not that. Be practical. Be safe. So I went to college, majored in pre-law, and spent years chasing the responsible path. I took detours I hadn’t planned and spent a long time wondering if I’d made the wrong choice.
Then I had my daughters. I went through old boxes and found that fifth-grade yearbook. There it was, in my own handwriting:
Writer.
It hit me like a freight train.
How could I tell my girls to chase their dreams if I wasn’t chasing mine?
That’s when I made the choice. I wasn’t going to let fear, outside expectations, or the weight of should keep me from the thing I’d always known I was meant to do. I started writing again — this time with intention, with purpose, with the full force of someone who had finally stopped fighting herself.
I finally listened.
I’m a BIPOC fantasy author writing speculative fiction across multiple universes — clean adventure fantasy, dark urban fantasy, and gritty epic fantasy. Every series I write centers female heroes, diverse ensemble casts, and worlds built beyond the defaults the genre has handed us for decades. No Eurocentric backdrops by default. No romance hijacking the plot. No characters of color warming the bench while someone else saves the day.
I’m Black. I’m Cuban. I’m a single mom.
And I write the stories I needed to find when I fell in love with this genre.
So what’s the moral of this story?
Whether you’re here because you’re a lifelong fantasy reader who’s tired of not seeing yourself in the genre, or because you’ve always felt like you were supposed to be doing something different — your younger self already knows the answer.
The kid who loved to create before anyone told them it wasn’t practical? They were right.