About

Writing books was never really my plan. I wanted to make animated movies.

That dream brought me across the world to New York City, where I studied animation at the School of Visual Arts. I got close — I was one of two finalists for a Pixar internship — but as you can guess, that didn't happen. So I kept going: making short films, working at some of the best animation studios in the city, and eventually deciding it was time to write my first animated feature.

The idea came from a nature documentary about snow leopards: A mother and her cub on their final journey together before separating forever. I couldn't stop thinking about it. What happens if the mother doesn't want to let go? What if the cub isn't ready? That’s when Snowlands was created.

When the reality of getting an animated film made set in — the pitching, the meetings, the uncertainty — I asked a different question: what if I made it a graphic novel instead? I could tell the story on my own terms and get it into readers' hands. So I self-published Snowlands: A Blood Moon in 2021. The response was encouraging, but I knew I needed a partner to take it as far as I wanted it to go. That's where Scholastic came in. We signed a multi-book deal and re-released it in 2026. It became a New York Times bestseller in its first month of release.

I still love animation. As a parent of two, I watch a lot of it. But whether Snowlands ever reaches the big screen or not, the story is already exactly where it belongs. And this is only the beginning.