As a young reader, writers were like gods and goddesses to now author Tricia D. Wagner. She never could have imagined weaving tales like her favorite storytellers, until a fateful April dinner conversation with her husband about a lecture he attended got her mind whirling. By the end of that summer, she'd written 400,000 words: a speculative fiction trilogy. Wagner felt as if she'd emerged from a chrysalis as some new sort of creature. She was hooked.It was important to Tricia to sharpen her skills, and she immersed herself in workshops, guides, and writing communities, learning from editors how to hone her craft. She did this for years, and the result is her a growing collection of published novels, novelettes, and poetry collections. She found writing to be a method for becoming the person she felt she was born to be. In writing her stories, Wagner was surprised and delighted to discover how real the characters become to an author; that for many writers, their characters end up as their most treasured friends. She loves to delve into them to mine their natures, secrets, and desires-to tell their stories with the legitimacy they deserve. In studying her characters, she finds she has the opportunity to shape herself, inching closer to the person she wants to become.Wagner hopes her readers feel enchanted when they read her stories. This is exactly how she feels when she finishes writing a story. She hopes that her writing might expand their minds, spirits, and worlds, and she hopes they fall in love with her characters and are moved by her artistry of language. When she isn't writing poignant works of literary fiction, Wagner works as a Director in Higher Education. In her spare time she enjoys refining her writing craft to discover new angles and landscapes that might enrich her writing palette. One such example is a recent course she took in learning to read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, something that's sure to end up in a story at some point. Wagner lives in Rockford, Illinois, with her husband and darling cats.
