I was born and raised in California where I'm pretty sure I started reading before I could crawl. I used to have a bad habit of reading 5 "Babysitter's Little Sister" books at a time. I wouldn't just be reading them in the same general time period, but I'd actually have them all in front of me and read a chapter in one before moving on to the next until I'd finished each book. This may be where I developed my bad habit of writing 5 books at once. Either way, I've definitely always been an avid reader.
When I was in the fourth grade my teacher had us write a story and said to describe things in the book as if you were trying to describe a picture to someone who couldn't see. This is where my love of adjectives came from. At that time I was reading Goosebumps books like they were going out of style so my first book ever written was called "The Haunted Theme Park"... although the title actually said the 'Hunted' theme park... but I was in fourth grade so we can excuse that. The most frightening part of this first book ever written by me wasn't really the story line, but the fact that the theme park was called "Scared To Death" and I felt it necessary to only call the theme park by it's initials then write "Now you can't hide"... you do the math. Probably wasn't the best thing for a fourth grader to put on the cover of their first book.
After high school I moved to Utah to attend Brigham Young University where I got a degree in Media Arts and a husband to boot. "The Husband" is now responsible for providing me with endless material for my books and many opportunities to speak in only movie quotes.
For some reason, my sophomore year of college I decided I wanted to keep up the tradition of my fourth grade book (the writing part... not the unwittingly inappropriate title) and start writing again. I already had 1 half finished YA fantasy book so I quickly finished the book up, wrote "The Breakup Artist" and started writing a dozen other books.
Now that more of my books are being published, I feel much more justified for spending hours and hours every day, hunched over a computer making odd facial expressions to decide how I'd describe them to someone who couldn't see. I also feel that my fourth grade perseverance has paid off.
If you'd like to contact me with any questions, comments, or... well... anything really, feel free to e-mail me at Shannencbooks@hotmail.com.
