Long Story Short
I’m a writer who believes in the magic of a good book. When I’m not staring out the window daydreaming about fictional characters, I’m a wife to my best friend and a mom to three little hobbits.
I have a slight obsession with enemies-to-lovers romances, slow burns, and emotionally constipated heroes who eventually figure it out. Fueled by iced coffee (because hot coffee makes me sleepy), I spend most of my days writing stories that’ll make readers laugh, cry, kick their feet, and occasionally question their emotional stability.
Short Story Long
I’m a second-generation Mexican American with a deep love for reading and a passion for my culture. Growing up, I loved listening to stories about my grandmother and her life in Mexico. I was also discovering my love for art and anime, but reading?
It was the bane of my existence.
Then one random errand happened.
During my freshman year of high school, I found myself in a bookstore trying to kill time while waiting for my mom to finish a doctor’s appointment.
Because let's be honest, if you had to choose between a stuffy waiting room and a bookstore, which would you pick? It's really a no-brainer.
As I wandered through the aisles, I stumbled upon a handful of books that I didn’t realize would alter the course of my life.
As with any good heroine, this was basically divine intervention.
Not only did I start reading the first page, but I somehow managed to make it through a quarter of the book while waiting for my mom without realizing she'd been watching me from the corner of the store, laughing at how absorbed I'd become.
And like the lovely human being she is, she bought me the entire four-book series.
Whether she was happy to see me reading or just wanted me to stop asking when we were going home, who could say?
All I knew is that, I was hooked.
Reading became my whole personality. I’d always been a daydreamer, the kind of person who could drift off into her own little world during class, on car rides, or in the middle of an otherwise ordinary day.
But once I discovered the magic of books, all those stories constantly running through my head finally had somewhere to go. Reading became another outlet for what my mom would call “an overactive imagination.”
Where Did the Journey Begin?
You Were My First may be my debut novel, but it actually isn’t where my writing journey began.
That started during my senior year of high school, when my school held a writing contest for Writers’ Week. Anyone could participate and submit poetry, short stories, comics, and all sorts of creative projects.
At the time, I was deep in my anime phase, watching the first season of Attack on Titan while reading the manga alongside a friend.
Something between the two clicked.
Together, my friend and I started working on a dark fairytale retelling of Pinocchio meets Attack on Titan.
And when I say we went all in, I mean we WENT ALL IN.
We were both artsy theater kids with a passion for the weird, so what started as a fun little project quickly turned into something much bigger. We developed an entire backstory, a magic system, a prophecy, and an elaborate world of lore. We even drew several of the characters and monsters ourselves.
We were ridiculously excited to share what we'd created when Writers' Week finally rolled around. The last thing we expected was for anyone else to care about it.
Boy, were we wrong.
At the time, I was a senior leader at school, one of those student assistants who helped teachers during gym class. After our first presentation, students from my freshman, sophomore, and even junior classes started approaching me to ask whether we’d be reading more of the story and when.
Even a few teachers approached us afterward, including one who was already a published author, and asked if we'd ever considered publishing it.
This is where the internal monologue of teenage me started short-circuiting.
Safe to say, we were over the moon.
We’d created something simply because we loved anime, storytelling, and the idea we’d come up with together. We never imagined people would actually want more.
Naturally, we looked into publishing and did our research. Unfortunately, traditional publishing was an incredibly hard market to break into, especially at our age. She was sixteen, I was seventeen, and self-publishing wasn’t nearly as accessible or commonplace as it is today.
Eventually, the story went on the back burner, and we went our separate ways creatively.
But the desire to write never really went away.
The Story That Changed Everything
A few years after graduating high school, a friend of mine self-published his own book, and it got me thinking.
What if???
I had stories, sure.
Plenty of them, actually.
My imagination had never been the problem. The problem was finding an idea that could hold my attention long enough to overcome my very impressive procrastination skills and actually finish writing it.
Then December of 2023 happened.
I woke up in the middle of the night while caring for my third child, and suddenly, I had an idea that wouldn’t leave me alone.
I looked at my husband, my best friend, and immediately knew what I wanted to write.
I wanted to tell a love story about two best friends who loved each other so deeply that everyone around them could see it—except for them.
Why I Write
Growing up, I struggled to find Latino representation in the media I consumed. Too often, the characters I encountered felt limited to familiar stereotypes or versions of our culture that didn’t reflect the people and experiences I knew.
I knew who the characters were and who I wanted them to be.
I wanted to write characters who felt real and authentic. Characters whose identities were part of who they were, not the only thing that defined them. I wanted to celebrate our culture, our families, our traditions, and all the little details that make our experiences special.
I wanted readers to see themselves reflected in the characters. I wanted someone to pick up one of my books and find a piece of themselves in its pages.
Edwin and Selena were born from my love for my culture and the desire to reach someone who needs to know that somewhere out there, someone is listening.
And so, two and a half years later, after countless hours of writing, rewriting, editing, and probably far too much iced coffee, that idea became You Were My First.
And somehow, the girl who once thought reading was the bane of her existence became an author.
Funny how life has its own ideas, isn’t it?
A Little More About My Stories
I write for the readers who love a little nostalgia, a lot of yearning, and characters who feel real. I have a soft spot for enemies-to-lovers, second chances, childhood connections, and heroes who might need an entire novel to figure out what the reader knew from chapter one.
I hope my books make you laugh, cry, kick your feet, and occasionally want to throw the book across the room.
Because at the heart of every story I write is the same thing: the belief that love, in all its messy and imperfect forms, is worth writing about.
Thank you for being here, for supporting my little corner of the indie author world, and for giving my characters a place in your heart and on your bookshelves.
Whether you’ve already met Edwin and Selena or you’re just discovering my books, I’m so happy you’re here.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have fictional people to emotionally torment.
And an iced coffee that’s probably melting.
♡ Stef