Hi!

Here’s your Day 8 post for the Countdown to the Cover Reveal of Wrong in All the Right Ways! Today’s topic is: Who Am I?

I mean, by now, I’m sure you understand that I am the author of WIATRW, but up to this point, I haven’t really told you much about myself, except that I wrote a book. But that’s the purpose of this blog post! To let you see just a snippet of who I really am. The woman behind the book, if you will.

So let’s see…I was born in San Diego, California on March 6th, 1992. I don’t know the exact time off the top of my head, but if I sifted through all of the important documents in my office desk and found my birth certificate, I could tell you. But I don’t have that kind of time, so that’s what you get. Anyway, moving on. I am the second oldest child in my family, but in total, there are six of us. Yeah, I know…six kids! There are enough of us to play a basketball game and have one alternate! Crazyyyy!

Alright, now that we have the basics out of the way, I can talk about my actual childhood. Before I begin, I must note that my dad was in the Navy, and while I am truly appreciative of his service in the military, I have to divulge that I HATED being a military kid. Why? Well, because we moved around so much. I never was able to have a best friend for more than  year or two because of how much we moved. We got to experience living in a bunch of different places, but that pro didn’t outweigh the con of moving so much. Talking about this actually makes me a little emotional, so I’m going to move ahead in the timeline.

We lived in California for the first twelve years of my life, and then we moved to New Orleans, Louisiana. It was a TOTAL culture shock. I went form always being being one of two black kids in my class to being part of the majority, which was super weird for me. I actually dealt with a lot of bullying in school when I first moved to Louisiana because I didn’t “act black.” I didn’t really understand it at the time, and I still don’t fully get what the big deal was, but it mostly had to do with the way I spoke. The kids would snicker and laugh at the way that I enunciated my words and spoke so properly. Oftentimes, they would say I wasn’t—and was never going to be—truly black because I “spoke white.” After hearing that all the time, I just decided that I wasn’t going to talk very much to anyone to keep the bullying at bay, which is probably why I’m still an introvert to this day. It wasn’t until I reached my sophomore year in high school (four years later) that I actually began to realize that I shouldn’t care so much about what other people think and that the only opinion about me that truly matters was my own. From that moment on, I began to live for me. I didn’t care how I came across to others. I was happy, and that’s all that mattered.

Okay, writing about this is making me sad…so let’s keep it moving.

I breezed through college at Xavier University of Louisiana, and after graduation, I went straight into working as a Teacher’s Assistant. It was there that I went to work on my writing. I would go to work in the morning and come home to write. And I guess it all paid off, because I am in the process of having my book, Wrong in All the Right Ways, traditionally published through Henry Holt and Co in July. But I wasn’t finished with my journey just yet. I ended up going back to school to get my teaching certification, and now I am a full-time English Teacher.

So that’s me! I’ve lived a pretty good life so far, and I have a feeling that things are only going to get better from here. I be sure to keep you updated on it all.

♥Tiffany