I was both poked and inspired by @RacheleSmit to put together an #AMMConnect Bio so here I am! I am hopeful this bio will let you all get to know a bit more about me and my story, and I look forward to checking out everyone else’s bios! 🙂

about me

My name is Britney and I like to think of myself as a part-time attorney, full-time writer (but we all know in reality it’s the other way around). I was born in Michigan, had a short stint in Illinois (which is, interestingly, one of my favorite places to write about), and mostly transformed from child to adult in southern Minnesota. Now I live in Ohio and I still don’t know how I feel about that.

I’m a relatively boring person with a lot of interests that I’m super passionate about, so I’ll just kind of make a quick list of the first 5-10 non-writing things that come to mind: tea, bullet journaling, traveling, hockey, Hamlet, ballet, and Batman. Plus a lot of other super random stuff.

I’ve been writing fiction for as long as I can remember. The first “novel” I remember attempting was in the fourth grade. I had just read a book with dual POV so I tried a dual POV novel. I also made up stories for my action figures and Barbies and to this day I want to write their stories up for real. In the sixth grade, I had a teacher who taught writing and even started a little club for writers and that was the first time I realized I could be a “writer.” I wrote all throughout Junior High in a notebook, and I wrote my first “complete” novel at 15 (of course I’m sure it was total crap, but to be honest with you the computer I wrote it on crashed and it’s lost forever – but don’t worry, I rewrote that novel when I was 18 and I still have that one… *cringe*). Also, we won’t mention all of the Final Fantasy X fanfic I wrote (I was very, very obsessed with that video game).

The first time I seriously sat down to write a novel was for NaNoWriMo 2006. I wrote a historical fiction YA novel that took place during WWII basically featuring a boarding school student who fell in love with her Japanese music teacher. (*ahem* the Japanese music teacher may or may not have been modeled after the love of my life of that time, Japanese rock star Gackt; when I grew out of my Final Fantasy X obsession, I fell madly for dear ol’ Gackt, who I was fortunate to see in person four times – sadly, it didn’t work out between us.)

But let’s fast-forward. Throughout college I wrote novels. Many, many novels. Most, if not all, were horrible. After college, I went to law school, where I continued to write novels. And then I passed the Bar Exam, where I really learned how to properly study! (Some of us are just slower learners, okay?)

In Ohio, the Bar Exam is a grueling, three-day exam that starts on the last Monday of July and goes from 9 AM – 5 PM (or something like that). Then it’s all day Tuesday. And finally, a half-day on Wednesday. Yeah. It’s a really long, horrible, stressful exam.

So what did I do to give myself a mental break while studying, you ask?

I wrote, of course. I wrote FEARLESS, a novel about a female MMA fighter with an upcoming title match at the end of the summer. As she battled her own self-doubt about her ability to win, I battled my own self-doubt about passing the Bar Exam.

And yes, my friends, that brings me to why I’m here now…

fearless

My entry for Author Mentor Match is titled FEARLESS, and it’s a young adult contemporary novel that does, indeed, feature a female MMA fighter named Annie Armani. Annie is a 17-year-old MMA fighter who has just won the title in a fluke-y manner: she got into the title fight after a last-minute cancellation and then knocked her opponent out in a single punch. All of a sudden she’s a star and she has no idea if she can win again.

Still, Annie pushes forward. She’s given a reality show documenting her journey to the next title fight. She’s also assigned a new, hot young trainer (*wink*). But Annie’s got a lot going on outside of the gym. At school she’s been bullied, and while her title fight has earned her some respect, she’s convinced it could disappear in a second. At home her mom is failing to make ends meet and needs Annie’s reward money to help take care of both Annie and Annie’s 8-year-old half-sister, Margie. Not to mention Margie’s dad is in jail.

But above and beyond everything else, Annie’s brother and idol, Marc, recently died in a car crash, leaving Annie all alone to deal with it all.

As Annie pushes through her grief and trains for her upcoming title match, her self-doubt spirals out of control and she doesn’t even feel like she’s living her own dream anymore. Maybe MMA stardom isn’t what she wants. But if that’s the case, what does she want? MMA is all she has left – all she has left of Marc.

The title match speeds closer and Annie has to decide – does she find the courage to fight and risk losing everything, or does she give it all up, even if it shatters her family?

my journey so far

FEARLESS has gone through tons and tons of changes from the draft I originally wrote back in 2014. I didn’t actually finish the first draft until 2015. And then I didn’t want to touch it. And I didn’t touch it until the beginning of 2016. That’s when I printed it out all nice and neat and started going through it with a red pen.

But, just like I had to learn how to study for the Bar Exam, I also had to learn how to edit and revise. That was quite a journey (and a long one). I’m one of those writers who finishes a draft and either thinks it’s THE WORST THING EVER or OH WAIT THIS IS ACTUALLY GOOD?! and basically I didn’t realize that, I, uh… needed to edit and revise.

I worked through that, though! With the help of many, many lovely CPs, I learned how to pinpoint what worked and what didn’t. From about March 2017 – present I have been revising and revising and revising. The cool thing about FEARLESS is that so far I haven’t gotten sick of it (other than that initial period when I first finished it…). I love working on it and I am amazed by the improvements I’ve made.

why i’m entering author mentor match

I wouldn’t be where I am with FEARLESS if it wasn’t for my critique partners. For me, writing isn’t so much an independent activity anymore. I love working with beta readers/critique partners. Reading works by other people has also helped me improve my own craft so much. I love being a part of the writing community and feeling like I’m truly *a part* of something.

That said, I’ve been querying FEARLESS off and on and I’m just… not getting anywhere. I’m not to the point yet where I feel like I need to give up on this project (at least I hope not?) but I feel like it might be missing something. I’m hopeful that through Author Mentor Match maybe I can find that missing something…

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Thanks everyone for reading! 🙂 I look forward to connecting with all the Author Mentor Match hopefuls!