About | Mindi Scott

This might be one of the shortest bios ever:

Mindi Rochelle Scott lives near Seattle, Washington, USA with her drummer husband in a house with a non-sound-proof basement. Freefall, her first novel, was published in 2010. Her second novel, Live through This, is scheduled for release by Simon Pulse in fall of 2012.

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And this might be one of the longest bios ever:

I was born in Tacoma, Washington to teenage parents. Well, actually, my mom was 17 and my dad was 20. But it sounds more exciting if they were both teens, right?

When I was four, my dad was killed in a collision with a drunk driver. I know that’s a downer thing to put in a bio, but it affected my life profoundly.

After that, my growing-up years were similar in to those of Charlotte Flax, the viewpoint character in the book and movie, Mermaids. I was introspective, kind of weird and boy crazy, had a single mom and a younger sister, moved around a lot, and went on the occasional bizarre adventure. (Almost everything else in Mermaids is entirely dissimilar to my life. Just so you know!)

I spent most of my summers visiting my dad’s family, going to the ocean, and reading books. I loved the teen section at the library, especially the Babysitters Club series, The Nancy Drew Files, Sweet Valley High, anything and everything Judy Blume, Cynthia Voigt’s Tillerman series, and the like. When I was fourteen, I started picking up my grandma’s John Grisham novels and my other grandma’s Victoria Holt historical/romantic/suspense novels.

In high school, my mom was convinced that I would grow up to become an English teacher, but I didn’t understand where she was coming from with that. I hated public speaking! I did love to read, and was occasionally complimented for my writing, but I didn’t know what, if anything, I should do with any of it.

In college, most of my essays received high scores and I got hooked on positive feedback from my instructors. I even took creative writing classes on purpose, liked them, and decided that someday when I got really, really old, I’d try to write a book.

The first job I got in real world was at a bookstore when I was 19. My family and friends thought it had something to do with that whole reading and writing thing, but honestly, it was just because the bookstore happened to be the first (and only) place at that time to offer me a position.

It was at this bookstore where I met and became friends with another employee, Dwayne. I had him “proofread” a few of my college papers, not realizing that he hadn’t read a book since high school. He told me he liked the honesty in my writing and asked if I had anything else to show him. I said, “Oh, if you think those essays are revealing, you would love the journals I kept in high school.”

He said, “Well then bring them in!”

I laughed because there was no way I was going to let anyone see that drivel, but on a whim one day, I decided to let him borrow them after all. He read the books cover to cover (hundreds of pages total) in about two days. Years later, I learned that that was when he first fell in love with me. Don’t worry, he didn’t fall for the teenage girl who angsted all over the place in her diaries, but instead with the early-twenty something woman who was willing to share so much of who she was with him.

Dwayne and I were married two and a half years after he’d read my journals and five years after we’d first met. I tease him that he’s the ultimate groupie. He rolls his eyes at that, but we all know it’s true.

In 2004, I’d been working in the office world for a few years and felt like I needed to do something different. I just didn’t know what. My husband suggested that I attempt to earn a living writing articles and/or books. With his encouragement, I quit my full-time job to work part-time and spent the rest of my time writing and learning how to get published. It was a lot harder than either of us could have imagined.

My first step was taking a nine-month fiction-writing program at the University of Washington. At the end of it, I had a completed draft of my first young adult novel, Faded As My Jeans. I made a valiant attempt to get agent representation, but collected about 75 rejections in a nine-month span before deciding to move on.

After a few false starts with other manuscripts, I enrolled in a MediaBistro Young Adult Novel writing class and began a new project, The Fake McCoy (later Scratching at the 8-Ball, and later still Freefall). This story took over my life and I spent 18 months writing and revising it for 20 to 50 hours a week. This time when it was ready, I sent it to agents with the hope that I’d get representation in my first or second round of queries. Instead, after another nine months and 75 rejections (what are the odds of that happening twice?) I felt defeated, like I’d wasted my time, like this writing-to-get-published venture might not be worth all the pain.

I decided to do one more revision in December 2008 and sent out more queries. It was my last shot with this manuscript before I would put it away forever. To my surprise and amazement, Jim McCarthy offered representation January 6, 2009 (the day after requesting and receiving it) and sold the book to Simon Pulse that May. Freefall was released in October 2010, and I couldn’t be happier!

Currently, Dwayne and I live near Seattle in a house from the 1950s with our four cats Angelus, Neko, Niña, and Oz. Dwayne’s band, Alabaster, rehearses in the aforementioned non-sound-proof basement regularly and the noise doesn’t ever bother me.

Well, okay. Maybe every once in a while.

But I’m willing to put up with almost anything for my #1 groupie.

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Here are some other things that I want to tell you. Just because.

Photo by Brittney Bush Bollay

I have:

lived in 22 different residences and 13 cities in Oregon and Washington State.
officially been a vegetarian since I was 16 (although my mom stopped serving meat at home when I was 7). No, I do not eat fish. Yes, I do eat lots of cheese and ice cream.
been obsessed with a few certain bands over the years. Most notably, Blind Melon, Unified Theory, The Killers, Ash, and Nightmare of You. A somewhat complete list of bands I’ve seen perform live is here.
held jobs as a janitor, shipping clerk, bookseller turned assistant manager, attorney’s assistant, assistant office manager for an auto appraisal firm, and a clinic coordinator for a weight management program.
completed two 5k races in 2009. And then I stopped running. *sigh*

I am:

a Libra and am, in fact, very Libra-ish in most ways. Although, I don’t necessarily believe in astrology.
still in possession of most of the journals I kept from age 13 through 16. If not for those journals, I probably wouldn’t be writing YA today. (See long bio above for more about this or click here to read excerpts.)

I hate:

the smell of bacon.
driving (although I do it up to five days a week).
rain and cold weather. I spend the months of November through March wishing I could move to Hawaii.

I love:

traveling and have visited at least 18 U.S. states as well as Canada, England, and Mexico. I plan to travel to many, many more places, but not until after I’ve gone back to Hawaii again!
Glee, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Veronica Mars, Arrested Development, The Clone Wars cartoon, Friday Night Lights, Roswell, and One Tree Hill (only seasons 1-4).

I can’t think of specific categories for the rest of these!

I:

attended private school from 3rd through 12th grade. All of my characters (so far) have gone to public school.
decided at age 13 that I wanted to become an actor when I grew up, thinking I’d then have the opportunity to meet and marry Christian Slater.
completed my first two years of high school in Olympia. Which means that when I talk about those days, I can (and sometimes do) sing/scream ala Courtney Love, “When I went to school in Olympia-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya.”
married Dwayne in Las Vegas after only a five-week engagement. (Although we’d been together for a couple of years by then.) It happened so fast that I never actually referred to him my “fiancé.” He went straight from “boyfriend” to “husband.”
cannot stop typing all this random information about myself. Okay. Stopping. . . NOW!