About

ME

I'm a writer who loves to help other writers!

Like many writers out there, my journey began as soon as I could read and write. I wrote small stories for fun and enjoyed the praise I got from teachers when they would read my stories aloud. I even illustrated most of them, practicing my hand at drawing.

When I was in elementary school, my family and I lived in Germany for three years. This was when I wrote my first “book” that my mom illustrated. If you can’t tell from the pictures, I LOVED Winnie the Pooh.

It wasn’t until I was in my early teens, though, that I realized people wrote all the books I loved to read, and that I could be one of those people. I started to take my writing a little more seriously and wrote the beginnings of dozens of novels. But I could never finish them. My interest petered off and I couldn’t figure out why.

I took a long break from any form of writing (and leisurely reading) when I was in engineering school. While I wonder at where I would be in my writing career today if I had done any writing during those years, I think I learned a lot from that break.

When I finally started writing again, I realized how good it made me feel. Writing boosts my energy (to a certain point…I’ve had some 7k writing days and that was too much for me!) and makes me feel excited and genuinely happy.

I started to pour myself into research. I get a kick out of telling people I collect hobbies, but it’s true. I’ve had a horse phase (that lasted until my horse crow-hopped me twenty feet and concussed me), did things like dog agility and obedience, gymnastics, cheerleading, basketball, knitting, painting, cross-stitching, throwing pots, acting…the list goes on.

My superpower is what enabled me to do all of that: my obsessive need to research. Yes, I do call it a superpower to make me feel better about myself.

Anything I’ve ever been interested in throws me into a black hole of researching everything I can find on the topic.

Cue awesome segue into why I made this website.

Before I finished writing the first 50k words of my novel, I realized that I could put my obsessive research to good use: to help other writers become authors.

In 2015, this website was born, and shortly thereafter I started to make YouTube videos, inspired by great minds like Joanna Penn, the folks at SFFMarketing, Ellen Brock, and Jenna Moreci.

It took roughly ten years of writing to learn what I was doing wrong. Each epiphany I had with my writing made me want to share them with the world. If I could help one person become an author, and skip the madhouse I went through, it would all be worth it!

And it has been. I’m touched by every message, comment, tweet, or email I get saying I helped someone finish their novel, to sit down and write the story they’ve been wanting to tell for years.

So to sum up my entire life in one “About Me” page: I’m a writer who loves to help other writers.

Feel free to explore the writing tips here on my website and the videos on my YouTube channel. You can check out my debut novel The Elysian Prophecy here, now available on Amazon!

Happy writing!

Vivien currently lives in Jacksonville, FL with her husband and two dogs, Keira and Rocky.

For business inquiries, please email vivien.l.reis@gmail.com

Have a writerly question you would like to ask me? Click here!