Jocelyn McDaniel

Hey, thanks for reading my stuff! I’ve been making up stories since kindergarten; the bachelor's degree in English from SUU only made it official. The history minor also offers a veneer for my armchair historian tendencies. American history appeals because it explains how we got here, with this state and this society, but medieval European history has always called to me. (Yes, I was once a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. And in junior high I made a set of armor from sheet tin and my mom's favorite metal mixing bowl. And duct tape, lots of duct tape.)

In my historical fiction, I've tried to write the world the way contemporaries saw it--magical realism wasn't a literary phrase: it was the way things worked. One can never get into another person's head, much less so when that person's perspective was as foreign as a medieval's is to us today. But I enjoy the attempt.

Like any English major, however, I found a career necessary. I ended up in healthcare after a "can I do this?" EMT class and I've recently completed physician assistant training. (You can read about some of my experiences in "Wake to the Fire Hose," my first personal essay collection.) Turns out my creative writing instructor Todd Robert Peterson was right on the money when he talked about the discipline of writing as well as the fear that kept one a debutant.

Hanging out in the Pacific Northwest for now with a fluffy retriever as a copilot, while dreaming of red rock and sagebrush-dotted spaces.