Pitch Wars Mentee Bio!

Welcome, one and all, to my Pitch Wars Mentee Bio! If you don't know what Pitch Wars is, head here for all the deets. And go here for the bios of all the other awesome mentee hopefuls!

And now on to the aforementioned bio:

Hi, I'm Joanna, and I'm overly fond of semi-colons and em-dashes, as well as a staunch defender of the Oxford comma (Oxford commas save lives you guys).

I've been writing since I was about seven years old. For proof, here's my first ever story, complete with amazing illustrations like this one:

You can clearly see why I decided not to pursue a career in art.

At 13, I was published in the children's magazine Stone Soup. I submitted tons of stuff before getting this story accepted—I didn't give up until they said yes!

That's me in the top photo. My bangs are pretty sweet, I know.

Since 2005, I've written six full novels and parts of three others, and revised (and revised and reVISED) several of them. I think I'm getting pretty good at this whole revising thing. Death to unnecessary words! Long live proper pacing and character development!

My six completed drafts plus one unfinished one.

My Pitch Wars novel was first drafted during NaNoWriMo 2006, and was inspired by the myths in Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series, the British India time period in M. M. Kaye's The Far Pavilions and Shadow of the Moon, Tolkien's Silmarilion, the mood of Keane's album Under the Iron Sea, and a single frame from the first Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movie.

Incidentally, the name of my blog also comes from this album!

Interesting novel fact: I invented nearly all of the names for this book, and realized I'd accidentally given brothers (same father, different mothers) two different last names. Instead of making them the same, I decided that in my society children take their mother's surname, not their father's. (Okay I thought it was interesting.)

I'm a musician, specifically a pianist, and the cadence and flow of words and sentences and paragraphs are extremely important to me. I love the lyrical, flowing writing styles of Ursula K. LeGuin, Robin McKinley, Tanith Lee, and Erin Bow.

My favorite book of all time is probably The Return of the King. But I'm also madly in love with the aforementioned Queen's Thief series (seriously, I need the next book NOW), George Eliot's Middlemarch, Diana Wynne Jones' Fire and Hemlock, Susannah Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel, pretty much anything Jane Austen ever wrote (but especially Emma and Persuasion), and Sherwood Smith's Crown Duel.

Possibly my favorite wedding pic.

Bert likes revising, too.

I daylight as a piano teacher, and have been happily married to the love of my life for almost two years now (seriously my hubs is the best!!!). We live in Gilbert, AZ, where we share an apartment with our stripey feline Bertie and an enormous grand piano. I'm obsessed with looseleaf tea, ice cream, the color green, and Doctor Who.