The Inspiration behind The Worst Story Ever Written

So there I was helping my first grader with his onomatopoeia homework and for the life of me I couldn’t pronounce this word. The unit, though, tickled my funny bone and a whisper in my ear told me it would pair well with an aardvark.

 Many months later I ran screaming from the house and debated spending the night on the driveway because of a freaking cockroach. Like all good authors, I knew I’d take my vengeance in a book.
 
 As a cover designer, I like sifting through photos and there was this one fantasy picture that had caught my eye—a beautiful redhead with pine cones in her hair surrounded by vintage books on a woodland floor. I wanted to write a story about it and thought I might as well try a real estate tactic I’d heard about where they posted very unflattering things about the houses, which in the end got them lots of exposure.
 

All these parts percolated until I went to write the follow-up to my debut, UpSpark. The characters kept goofing off, so I relented and wrote this book with all its myriad inspiration to produce a goofy mix of romcom paranormal romance that thinks it’s a mystery. And thus The Worst Story Ever Written was born…
 

...And then eviscerated and zombied back together with new stuffing, plot threads, and two years worth of writing know-how and viola—you have the leveled-up second edition!