What do you write?

I write across genres and age categories but primarily focus on picture books and young adult novels. Each of my stories centers on latine kids (and their multigenerational families!) who are curious, brave, and full of love.

What is your writing process?

This depends on age category, but mostly, I feel my way around a story. For picture books, my stories often begin with an idea jotted down in my notes app. On a particularly inspiring day, I might type out an entire draft right then, but more commonly, the complete story usually comes later and evolves through multiple iterations before it’s ready for my critique partners and, later, my agent.

My novels are character-driven, so I need to first get to know the people who make up the world. I spend a lot of time with them in my mind before they ever grace the page. I rarely go into a first draft with more than a relationship with my characters and the five main points of the story (the inciting incident, crossing the threshold, midpoint reversal, the beginning of the end, and the conclusion). After drafting, I reverse-outline and revise from there—all in the same document with no “dump file!”

What are you working on now?

I’m going back and forth between two new YA contemporaries. One is the second in the same universe as my first novel. The other is like “You’ve Got Mail” but make it cosplay. I’m also always picking at a picture book manuscript or two. I’m working on a number of them right now, ranging from a fun concept book to an inspiring woman-in-STEM biography.