"Presumably, you’ve read some of my writing and you want to know who is responsible for it.  If so, thank you.

 

At the age of 12, I wrote a diary entry that held one big truth.  It said, “Most of all, I want to be a writer.”   Although it took me decades after that to get a book deal, always, at my core, I’ve been a writer.  I’d like to think I spent the first half of my life watching, which is a very important thing for a writer to know how to do.  Now, I begin my career in telling.  Or, better yet, showing.  (No one likes a writer who tells).

 

My first novel, The Secret Side of Empty, bears some resemblances to my own life.  But, like all good fiction (fingers crossed, one hopes you’ll agree that it’s good fiction), it is much better than real life.  The answers are snappier.  The outcomes much more clear.    It is about a girl who is undocumented, or “illegal” as most people refer to it.  (I hate that term, but that’s a story for another day).  I, too, was illegal.  It hurt and it carved a deep groove of shame in me.  Luckily, I’ve mostly whittled it away with good friendships, lots of soul searching and, of course, my beloved written word.  The book deal didn’t hurt.

 

I’ve seen many author bios that give you incontrovertible proof of why the author is someone to be reckoned with.  Awards.  Impressive pictures with famous, even more to-be-reckoned-with people.  A long list of published books.  Besides the fact that I don’t have any of those things, it strikes me that I don’t have to explain my qualifications to write.  I write because it’s what I’m best at.  And my best  is all I’ve got."

Hats off to you, Maria.

Maria E. Andreu

• Website: mariaeandreu.com/