When I was in high school, I was inspired by two people to become a lawyer: my Grandpa and Ally McBeal. I wanted to understand why the world worked the way it did, and in the earnest way only a teenager can, figure out how to make it better. By college, I had decided to become the President of the United Nations General Assembly. I had absolutely no clue how one went about doing that. Alas, life went in a very different direction. I married young, had children, and spent most

I was the kid who watched The X-Files every week, hunted down Nancy Drew books at secondhand stores, and watched horror movies at wildly inappropriate ages. To this day, I still love escape rooms because I want to solve the puzzle before everybody else in the room. I came to ThrillerFest last year because John Grisham was speaking, and I grew up reading every one of his books and watching every adaptation. Last year, I came purely as a fan. This year, I came celebrating the c

Today, I finished my thesis defense for my Masters in English Literature degree. To celebrate, let's play with a little metaphor. I'm looking back at my life and ahead into my future, and I see it as a great symphony. A large scale work with multiple movements, emotional arcs, crescendos, and climaxes. There's a loosely cohesive collection of sweet little lullabies, love songs, elegies and requiems, heartbreak ballads, endless dance beats, awkward karaoke, full on orchestras.