Introduction

Hello out there! My name is Aquinnah Bree. I was the little girl who stayed inside for at least one recess per day to read. Because why swing or slide when you can communicate with animals or fly?

Back then, I didn’t want to be “an author.” In fact, I thought I’d become a professional dancer when I finally “grew up.” Writing this now, I’ve realized that my heart’s intent was never to plié alongside Misty Copeland and Isabella Boylston. My dream has always been to tell stories—wherever and however I can.

It started in second grade. The itch. I would sit down to watch a movie, and within the first three minutes, a wave of ideas would overwhelm me. I quickly learned to ignore them because I was an efficient seven-year-old who just wanted to enjoy Free Willy in peace (preferably with ice cream).

And so, I allowed the itch to go unscratched without really thinking about it. That was, until my language arts teacher told my entire second grade class that we were going to be writing short stories.

In retrospect, very few of my classmates were excited about that assignment and no one so much as halfway reached my level of pure happiness. I was going to write a story. With ideas. It was going to be wonderful.

So, I watched some more movies, soaked up all the inspiration I could manage, sat down with a #2 yellow pencil and a blank piece of lined paper and wrote. I wrote for hours. I wrote until my hand hurt. The next day, I drew a cover for my story, depicting the most important characters—the horses (duh). I stapled all of my papers together and turned them in.

I had never been so excited to have a school assignment returned to me. I just wanted to look at it, smile at it, put it in a fireproof box and hand copies out to my grandchildren when I was really old.

I had scratched the itch.

And like a mosquito bite, I’d just enflamed it.

Like all writers, I’ve accumulated a large and occasionally daunting pile of unfinished stories over the years. I also continue to dance. When I was 11 years old, I began pursuing pre-professional ballet training and was inspired by my teachers, who used choreography to tell the stories in their hearts. As I moved up the levels at my studio, I heard more and more often, “Tell a story. What are you trying to tell the audience?”

So, while dance was teaching me how to tell a story with someone else’s ideas, I sat down to write my own story. I found people, and places and events inside of me that I had never known were there.

And then, one day, I had created a world.

Like it was five minutes ago, I remember writing the last word, inserting the last period, and bam—I had written an entire fantasy novel and had never been so unspeakably happy.

For the first time in my life, I knew what to tell people when they asked me, “What do you want to be?”

I’m an author.

Shortly after this—one of the biggest and most satisfying moments in my life—I began to realize that I did not have an itch to go to college and began exploring other options. I am now an apprentice with Praxis, a nine-month-long entrepreneurial program that’s all about jumping off the conveyer belt of life. It’s about living instead of learning how, which is the short and sweet way to summarize my writing experience. I write. I learn. Stuff gets written. It’s a party, and I love breaking the mold in this way.

But what happened after that last word? Well… the itch was still there. Which was good because I had a lot of growing, editing and rewriting to do. I also had two other books that wanted to be written.

To this day, I know that three things got me through that first draft—things I won’t soon forget:

• My characters – because they had shared their stories with me and were counting on me to share them with the world

• Books – because they gave me a home

• and other storytellers – because they are some of my favorite humans.

One day soon, my debut novel that I have been living in since sixth grade will be made available to you, dear reader, and I’ll be ecstatic. Overjoyed. Bouncing off the walls in pure glee. But I will still itch. I will continue to write. Because whether or not fate exists, stories keep happening.

And I just can’t stop writing them down.