(I ended up deleting my joke answer and writing a real one. Sorry, @JF Dubeau!)

Writing is one of the ways I interpret life. I need it to help me figure out how to exist in a world filled with horrible things and still feel hope. I had your garden-variety shitty childhood, and stories were always an escape - both reading and writing them helped me make it to adulthood.

I'm not interested in convincing comfortable people how "dark and gritty" life can really be. Those kinds of stories are fine for whoever wants to read and write them, but a lot of us already know. We need to know whether or not the darkness and grit are worth it.

Stories help me survive, and I like to think maybe someday something I write could help someone else survive, too.

As for this book, I like adventure and angst and love and heroics, and I don't just want to consume these kinds of stories; I want to create them.

In the most general sense, I'm working out my understanding of how justice and mercy might exist in tension in a world where everyone is flawed, and everyone wants forgiveness. My faith as a Christian informs my exploration of justice and mercy, but I'm not writing an allegory or trying to indoctrinate anyone. (Unless you count writing multiple complex, realistic women as feminist indoctrination, in which case... yeah.)

I'm interested in exploring service, humility, and self-sacrifice as the foundations of leadership.

I'm interested in exploring power and injustice, recovery from trauma, and the meaning of beauty.

I'm interested in exploring community versus the individual, identity formation, and the definition of family.

Also, I want to make spaceships explode!