Many years ago, in my fledgling homeschool mom days, I convinced my children that we were part of a secret international society of do-gooders called Team Sasquatch. Occasionally we would be contacted by headquarters and given assignments—generally requiring the kids to assist in research or to visit some special location and be on the lookout for something—or someone—nefarious, like notorious baby panda thief Bart D’Fink.
We all had our codenames; CaiCaiSquatch, AshySquatch, PoSquatch, etc. As the leader of our SquatchSquad, I became Mamasquatch.
At the time, Mamasquatch was a SAH mom, a Homeschool mom, a Girl Scout mom, and an Irish Dance mom. Sure I had interests and hobbies; I dabbled in Yoga, led the SquatchSquad on epic history adventures every summer, and never gave up music, but pretty much everything revolved around my kiddos. When my oldest said he wanted to try D&D, I said “Sure.”
The first time I sat down at the game table and the DM handed me a character sheet, I raised an eyebrow. An hour later, when the kids and I were trapped inside a building with the clock ticking and we had to figure out some mysterious puzzle all while chasing after some mysterious fish dude, I realized that somehow I had stumbled into a magical world of collaborative storytelling.
Back in my undergrad days when I was rushing through a BA in English, intent on landing a teaching job that would give me health benefits and allow me to spend summers with the kids, I thoroughly enjoyed all my creative writing classes. When the babies were in bed, I could lose myself in the pages of my imagination—all with the guilt free excuse of “schoolwork”. Somewhere between graduation/divorce/remarrying/more kids, I had forgotten how much I enjoyed creating narrative.
I had two wonderful years at the table with that DM—who was an expert story crafter. When he and his family relocated back to Canada, the older kids and I joined another gaming group. On the first day we rolled up characters. At the end of the session the new DM mentioned that he expected 1000 words of backstory by the next session, so he could flavor things for our specific arcs. Six days later I emailed him 26 pages. Six months later I applied to grad school for an MFA in Creative Writing. Mamasquatch the Writer was born.
When my oldest daughter recently asked me why I was starting a website, my answer was two- fold.
1. I want people interested in my work to be able to contact me without traveling through social media.
2. I want to contribute to building the greater writing community.
So what to expect in this endeavor:
Writing makes me happy. It makes my brain feel good. I derive joy from playing with words. Sometimes when I am reading other folk’s work, I cheer out loud or pump my fist when I read something delightful, knowing how excited that writer felt when the phrase came together. Some of my content is going to recommendations for work that I find delightful, or historical fiction sources that I find useful.
I have a love-anxiety filled relationship with workshops. Empowering new writers to dip their toes into narrative crafting, gives me a crazy endorphin rush. However, social anxiety makes the lead up to this pretty miserable. I am hoping that immersion therapy will help as I plan to offer a few workshops every year. (Come see me at SquatchCon in Port Angeles, WA!) Much of what you will be seeing in the blog portion of this site is going to reflect what you might get in person at one of my workshops, or other Storycrafting content. You can also find out where I am facilitating in-person events.
Being Neuro-Spicy is my superpower. ADHD is glorious for creativity if you know how to wrangle it, though I am still working on harnessing my sensory issues. (Tortilla chip crunching and any sort of high velocity fan short my brain out to almost comical degrees.) I go through phases where I hyper focus on various topics—sometimes research adjacent, often not—and thought it would be a fun peek in my exciting brain to share those with you.
Finally, If you would like to contact me for professional reasons, I have a whole page for that.
Extra-finally: By reading this far you are officially inducted into Team Sasquatch. More communications with Headquarters: coming soon!
Mamasquatch out.
Mamasquatch the Writer 
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