Never be afraid to fly.
E. M. Vick was born in Edina, Minnesota in 1990 and grew up in adjoining suburb, Bloomington. Her parents were both attorneys, who loved to read and passed that love down to their eldest daughter. If E.M. Vick wasn’t reading, she would often be playing imaginary games were her childhood friends. Her parents and younger sister, Lizzie, often remarked that she was, “off in her own little world.” She felt she could choose to have a sense of direction or to have various worlds living in her head. She chose the latter.
When faced with a challenge or anxiety, she would dive deep into the pages of her books. She loved living and breathing in the worlds of J.K. Rowling, Jenny Nimmo, and Neil Gaiman (amongst a few).
It wasn’t until 6th grade when she realized that she could breathe life into her own imaginary worlds. Her teacher, Mrs. Wahlig, had a journaling session where she would put prompts on the board for her students to write. However, E. M. Vick wanted to only write about magic, portals and pre-teen trying to find her place in it all. Mrs. Wahlig must have seen something different, because she let E. M. Vick write about it all and go well over the allotted time. It was then that E. M. Vick entered her first poetry contest. She was published in a small collection of student poems. That was all that was needed to spark and inspire her to strive for more. E. M. Vick would never again be found without a pen and journal somewhere on her person.
After high school, E. M. Vick attended Gustavus Adolphus College. She told her parents she was going there for a writing degree. They never deterred her from that dream. There she met the wonderful professors that would continue to change and shape her life and writing. Her poetry was published once in a school anthology, and she learned for the first time what it meant to be rejected. Yet, nonetheless she preserved. She was always writing whether it was in her dorm on or in the middle of orchestra practice in the margins of the sheet music. E. M. Vick would also meet her now husband while at college. He quickly became one of her biggest supporters.
E. M. Vick graduated college with a Bachelors in English (with a Writing Emphasis). She picked up a job at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota as a Call Center Representative. During the day she worked hard to rise through the ranks and in the evenings and on the weekends, she would work on her novels.
She eventually moved to Eagan, Minnesota. Though E. M. Vick told herself she would never marry an attorney, life had another plan. Kyle Vick, now a litigation attorney, and herself had a friendship that blossomed into a romance. They adopted two cats, Yuna and Tidus (yes, named after the Final Fantasy X characters). In October 2018, they tied the knot. When her husband isn’t helping with edits or listening to her latest ideas, the pair often travel.
During wedding planning, E. M. Vick continued to send out query after query to publishers and agents alike. After over 100 rejection letters, a Texas publisher, Waldorf Publishing Company, saw something in the novel Top Hat Society. It was a story that E. M. Vick had been working on since 10th grade. They decided to pick it up for a 2019 release.
While Top Hat Society is E. M. Vick’s first novel in a trilogy, the author has no expectations of slowing down. The other worlds that exist in the corners of her mind are begging to be told. They want to be an escape for those in need, just as Harry Potter, American Gods, and The Children of the Red King were for a young girl all those years ago. E. M. Vick hopes her works will inspire others, young and old, to never be afraid to open their wings and see where the winds of life take them.