The youngest child of four, the only thing Amy ever wanted growing up was a horse (well, maybe not the only thing).  She started taking weekly riding lessons at age nine and just before she turned twelve, she got her wish.  Her parents bought her a pony, Small Potatoes aka Tater (Link to Amy’s horses page).  Tater and Amy stayed together through middle and high school and, of course, he found a home in Athens when Amy went to school at Ohio University.  Amy and Tater found the sport of Eventing during college and soon she became a member of the United States Combined Training Association (link) and an avid competitor.  After graduating with a degree in Environmental Sciences, Amy and Tater moved to Aiken, South Carolina.  (link)  Amy’s first job in Aiken was riding racehorses at the training track but after a couple months of this, Tater decided Amy needed a better paying job so he promptly ran into/got hit by a high-level manager at the Savannah River Site (SRS) who was driving by the barn.  Tater was okay – the car was totaled.  In the end, Amy’s resume ended up in the right hands at SRS and she landed her first job.  Amy has now been employed at SRS for over twenty years.

While Amy did aspire to write when she was in elementary and middle school (she even believed she was a reincarnated writer at one time), she became more interested in acting and then in environmental issues in high school and college.  The dream of writing was put aside in order to “save the world.”  Though her job at SRS is in the field of environment compliance, Amy has never quite felt the satisfaction of making a difference.

Amy’s long buried dream to write, resurfaced during a tragic event in her life.  Her oldest sister, Sue, called early one morning urging her to come to Birmingham as her daughter (Amy’s niece) had been in a car accident.  Things didn’t look good – at all.  To provide some kind of distraction, Amy picked up an audio book at a Cracker Barrel on the way to Birmingham.  She’d never heard of the book, Twilight, (link) or the author, Stephenie Meyers (link).  As Amy listened to the novel, Stephenie Meyer’s first person voice resonated with Amy.  The story itself had deeper meanings due to the life and death situation at hand but the voice was one Amy could relate to (as so many others have) and it was the type of voice Amy would write – if she were to write. 

After her niece’s funeral, Amy found the second book in the Twilight Saga, New Moon, (link) and listened to it as well. She was hooked.  Because she was so invested in the world of Twilight, Amy chose to write a fan fiction novel first.  No pressure. No chance at publishing.  Established characters, storyline, etc.  Eternal Day (link to ED) was the result.  Writing this fan fiction novel was an excellent way to start the writing process to see if she liked it and if she could commit to it.  After finishing out the Twilight Saga in her version, Amy knew she could write her own novel.  

Now what to write about.  She knew it had to be young adult and in the first person POV.  She knew it had to have lots of romance in it.  She knew it probably had to have horses in it (write what you know!).  Then one day she was talking to her horse, Rally, in the barn and the idea hit her.  Rally who is Ransom in Crossing Over was tall, dark and handsome, as well as a talented show horse.  “If only you were human,” she said and the idea for Crossing Over (link to CO page) was born.