About Me

Hi!  My name is Angela McConnell, and I am a speculative fiction writer.  I write short stories, novels, graphic novels, scripts, and once-in-a-blue-moon poetry.

I was born in Southern California, spent my early years in Okinawa, then New York, my elementary years in Oklahoma, junior high in Germany, and high school back here in Southern California where I remain a determined future resident of Hawaii. I am married with a toddler, and I have all the prerequisite animals, bad habits, and weird social quirks to be a great writer.  (If I am deemed lacking in any of these things, I am open to expanding on any of them…except the animals — we have five, thanks.)

After high school, I got my two-year degree and earned my stenographer’s license, working for several years as a freelance deposition reporter, then as an official court reporter in a civil courtroom, before taking the next logical step and opening a karaoke bar with my family. We ran the business for five years and sold it after our baby was born.

Somewhere in all of that, I attended the San Diego Writer’s Conference, a week-long workshop hosted by the Writers of the Future, and I completed the year-long Professional Program in Screenwriting at UCLA. So far, I have had two short stories make it to the quarterfinals of Writers of the Future Contest, and I am working hard for my first professional sale.

Throughout all of that, in between the questions of counsel and the answers of witnesses, in between drink orders of bar patrons, and the interminable, endless hours of commuting (20 hours a week, baby!), I always, always was thinking about the writing. Always. In court, the margins of my trial notes were always filled with plot outlines and ideas, and every attorney and witness became a character sketch. At the bar, my apron was always stuffed with karaoke slips with ideas scribbled across the back, and there was no end to the characters that crossed my path.

Even at home now, caring for my beautiful little girl, in those little tiny spaces of time where I’m able to form thoughts, it’s all about the writing…and it’s getting worse as I get older.  Or maybe it’s getting better because I’ve got someone looking up to me now.  So, you see, this has to be the year I become a published writer — or at least do everything in my power to make that happen.

And this blog is where I come to share, vent, experiment, philosophize, hope, dream, and cheer about writing, about the writing process, and the writing journey.

Call me melodramatic, but I believe that we who write are but mortal gods setting forth alone and together on a wide, endless road. Stories and worlds are the tracks we leave behind, heroes and angels gather where we sleep, and villains and darkness lay in waiting for us just around the bend.

So come walk with me. Ya know, safety in numbers, misery and company, and more heads being better than just mine. I have peanut butter-stuffed pretzels, boatloads of tea, and an iPhone. We can take turns watching out for werewolves and aliens, and swap war stories over the fire…ooh, and make s’mores!