Renee N. Meland grew up in a suburb of Seattle, surrounded by the beauty of the Pacific Northwest. Her favorite thing to do with her friends as a child was to play “pretend,” which lead to her love of storytelling. Some of her favorite memories involve being pioneers on the frontier and making sure her dolls didn’t get kidnapped by the evil neighbors next door. When she wasn’t settling new lands, she was sailing across the seas. Sometimes she made it, sometimes she didn’t, but she always had several adventures by the time lunch rolled around.
Today, she plays pretend by being her characters: one minute she is a fifteen-year-old girl trying to grow up in a frightening new world, and the next she is a skilled fighter. Each character is a little bit of herself, from the messed-up and psychotic, to the peaceful and sure. When she is not in a different world, she is doing her favorite thing in this one: spending time with her husband and two dogs. She is inspired by the work of Neal Shusterman and Chuck Palahniuk.
