When I was little, like three, four years old, I decided I wanted to write books. I took tiny pieces of paper, Scotch-taped them together, and “wrote stories.” My grandma thought it was cute. When I was about eight years old, I saw a TV commercial for Gone With the Wind—it was coming to theaters and the pageantry caught my imagination, so I asked Grandma if we could go.

She said of course, since that’s pretty much what she always said if I asked for something, although I didn’t do it often. The only caveat was that I first had to read the book. All 1000-plus pages of it.

So I did. I’m sure there were many things I didn’t understand, because, if you haven’t read the book but only seen the movie, you’re missing out Scarlett’s other two children and a host of interesting characters. But I read that book, and I got to see the movie afterwards.

Over the next decade, my scribblings evolved a bit and I submitted short stories to a few magazines—collecting rejection slips, naturally—and I worked on school newspapers and took a summer journalism class. I also kept a diary for some time; a very 1970s thing to do, it seems.

About seven years or so ago, I started writing professionally. Like, you know, for pay—pretty exciting, even though the topics were often boring and mundane. But at least I brought in a few dollars here and there.

And by the time that market dried up, so to speak, I had eaten that fateful salsa late one night and had a dream about a twenty-something young woman kicking butt and taking names . . .

That was Abby, of course, and so her story began: REDUCED was born.