When I decided to officially embark on my writer journey, I knew I wanted to use a pen name. I wanted to keep myself & my writing career separate. Not necessarily for a grand scale reason, but for myself. I needed to see myself & the writer as two individual entities. What Irene Daniels asks for, what she desires, how she pushes through...is not what I typically do for myself. Irene Daniels is more than just me.

She is my Grandmother as well. I chose the name "Irene" for her. She was the one who engraved my love and respect for books on my soul. Her two favorite things in this world were books & food. Reading, cooking, and eating were her greatest joys in life. With crochet closely behind.

She was the kindest woman this world in all of history could bring forth. Growing up she told me how she used to read by moonlight when her parents told her it was bedtime. The hunger she had for books never satiated. She dreamt of being a writer or an English teacher herself. But she was Polish in a time when it was a joke to be Polish. She had teachers put her in the back of the classroom because "Polish were too stupid to learn anyway". In high school she told teachers of her plans for after school to be an English teacher or a writer...that teacher laughed at her and said, "Polish women are only good for making babies."

So that's what Grandma did. She gave up on her dreams & made babies. She had 8 children who all went on to have children of their own. My entire family built upon the broken dreams of teenage girl.

My Grandmother passed away to cancer over a decade ago & I knew when I started this I wanted to in some small way make her dreams come true with this. I wanted Irene to be published. I wanted Irene to be a writer. I wanted Irene to forever be on the pages of books she loved so much.

My pen name means the world to me. It is a part of not only my history, but my whole family's. A writer by any other name would still be a writer, but any other name wouldn't have me being the writer I want to be.