I published my first book in 2021. Before that, I worked for a decade to hone my writing craft and build a network in the publishing community. As I did so, I worked other jobs and even thought I would ultimately follow a different career path.
I’m grateful I had those previous jobs—they gave me a wider perspective on life and I draw from them regularly when developing characters and settings. It’s fun to look back and see how they inform my writing today.
Restaurant Life
Through all four years of university, I worked at a steakhouse called Lombardi’s.
Football is big business in Northeast Wisconsin and the opposing teams stayed at the hotel Lombardi’s was located inside of. I started work as a hostess, often running the show on what we called Game Nights, the night before a home Packer game. Lombardi’s was also a staple for many of the executives in the area to take their clients and guests to.
I loved gossiping with the servers and managing the flow of hundreds of guests in a night. I eventually worked as an expo in the kitchen, did room service for the hotel, and started as server’s assistant before I quit after graduation.
Through this job, I met many people—bartenders, lifelong fine dining servers, a guy who stole tips, a group of friends who tipped me $100 for our biggest table, football players I couldn’t name but who had fans standing outside hoping for a glimpse of them, security members from teams across the country, local A-listers. It’s because of my time at Lombardi’s I can manage a colorful cast of characters in a book, each with their own outlook on life, just like inside a restaurant.
International Development
For over two years, I lived in a rural community in the Kingdom of eSwatini as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer. I was an educator and did extensive work with kids who were classified as Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVCs).
It was a completely new way of life for me, with a big emphasis on quiet, rural living. It was an hour’s walk to buy a loaf of bread. I washed my clothes by hand. Lived without running water. The world’s most venomous snake, the Black Mamba, lived in the neighborhood as well as monitor lizards, Marabou Stork, and mongooses.
For me, it was the experience of a lifetime and widened my perspective to cross cultural challenges, language obstacles, and global initiatives. It’s this experience that brings cultural awareness to my stories.
I still have a foot in this world as a board member of the Caneille Regional Development Fund, a nonprofit creating opportunity through education in rural Haiti.
Museum World
Through university and for half a decade after, I always intended on working in the
museum world, perhaps, writing books on the side. I interned at a history museum and art gallery, worked at an art museum and a children’s museum, and was a docent at a glass museum. I love the visual arts and appreciate all that museums do for us.
Ultimately, I realized I didn’t want to go on for my master’s in museum studies or art history which narrowed my ability to climb the museum career ladder.
My experiences around museums and their work impressed upon me the hugeness of our universe and the immense scale of time. Academic settings like this appear often in my work and it makes me more thoughtful about themes like preservation, communication, natural history, the visual arts, and how we learn.
A lot of authors say they knew they were going to be writers from a very young age. Honestly, the idea never even occurred to me until I was in my twenties. It may have been a unique path, but I’m grateful for the lives I lived before I was a writer. They make me a better storyteller.
