Born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida, Shanda has seen many dreams blaze in her spirit—but none bigger than her desire to one day be a published author. That dream stems from her love for writing and has always been in the back of her mind, she admits. Because her natural curiosity for how people tick sparks many of her writing topics, she also dreams to one day enhance her writing skills with psychology as a career. Of course, on top of writing, she is also an aspiring actor, something she’s wanted to do since high school, and now at age 21, she has shown her skills a myriad of times. Yet, her love for writing, and her dream to be an author, has always stuck. She began writing when she was 13 years old—perhaps because of the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan. She started off with small short stories and slowly progressed into stories more complex. She also started with autobiographical writing, telling stories from her perspective and life experiences, as well as other first-person writing that helped readers go deep into the soul of the main character. More recently, though, she has switch to third person, which now opens doors to a world of imagination that goes far beyond her own life to stories that intertwine emotional characters in a tapestry of plots and hairpin turns.