In preparation for sharing some exciting news, it was about time that I updated my About Me page!
First up: the dreaded author photo! It took several tries to get a photo I could use. My friend Emma and I shoot weddings together all summer long, and we kept trying to fit it in, some time during a wedding. There are shots of me among hundreds of candles, and shots in breweries, and shots with weird silver lights. Every time we took them we both ended up saying, “this doesn’t feel quite right.” Finally I dragged my husband outside, and made him pose until I got the lighting and background just right, and then we switched places and got the shot. And then we did it a few more times, in a few different places. Here’s what we ended up with:
And then: the bio. How do you compress your entire life and motivation into one interesting and hopefully funny paragraph? I spent several weeks and wrote several bios. Or, I tried to write bios. Mostly they ended up sounding like manifestos, or lists of things that I like, or how I define various nebulous concepts. Again, everything I ended up with didn’t feel quite right. Finally, I sat down and imagined the places my bio might go, and suddenly it fell into place. (For now, at least!)
Along the way, I consulted Jonathon Auxier’s very helpful blog post series, After the Book Deal. I’m not sure I was able to take advantage of all his wisdom, but it certainly helped me out immensely. Here’s a link to the Do I Really Need a Headshot page: