hopIn About Heather Christie 

Hi, there!

I’m a small town girl, living in the Big Apple. Rural Pennsylvania was home and where I grew up with my two brothers and  sister. My dad was an emergency room doctor who loved old houses and my mother was a mathematician homemaker (a Temple valedictorian who insists she should have gotten her PhD before having all of us). My parents suffer from a disease called Let’s-Renovate-This-Old-House. My childhood was spent bouncing through rural Pennsylvania and along the Eastern Shore of Maryland as my parents restored one old house after another. Eventually we settled in the historic Oley Valley (a small town about an hour north west of Philadelphia). My childhood was spent walking the quaint Main Street surrounded by beautiful hills, covered bridges, and rolling cornfields. In my memory, the sun is always shining and Mrs. Delong’s candy shop is always open. This little village and the people I knew there are imprinted in my psyche and have shaped much of my writing.

I’ve always been shy. So shy that in the fifth grade, I was the only kid in my class who didn’t get a part in the school play. My mother was furious and stormed up to the school to complain (I still didn’t get a part). I was a quiet child, but a fast runner, and won the fifty-yard dash, beating all the boys, the same year as my traumatic theatre exclusion. With two brothers I was a tomboy and earned a starting position on their all-boys’ soccer team. But soon the guys were playing on club teams and way back then there weren’t many options for girl soccer players (both brothers later played Division I College Soccer and my brother, Jamie, had a stint with the US National Team). To help me gain confidence, my mother enrolled me in modeling school under the guise that attending would help me break out of my shell.

And I loved it!

By high school I was spending half the day in my tiny country school, then catching a Bieber Bus to NYC, and traipsing through the city on modeling go-sees and acting auditions. It was an exciting quest fueled by my desire to escape the small-minded bullying by a mean girl at my high school. At the time, I couldn’t get out of Oley soon enough!

For my sixteenth birthday my father gave me a plastic bag full of books—one of the most important gifts of my life, because it introduced me to the amazing world literature. The bag was stuffed with Hemingway, Salinger, Knowles, Vonnegut, and more. I’d sink into a book and lose myself. My senior year of high school, I attended the local community college and completed all of my credits required to graduate by December, and moved to New York City after that Christmas. The following September I started at Fordham University (Lincoln Center Campus). I landed a small part on a soap opera and worked the shoe shows to make money (the only modeling gig for a short person with a size six foot). I left New York City for Dallas, TX, enrolling at the University of Texas, Dallas. I gave up my dreams of a career in show business, but fell deeper in love with books. I graduated with a B.A. in Literary Studies and became a flight attendant who secretly wrote terrible poetry, but got to see Africa.

I ended up in Baltimore, MD and I began selling real estate. I had the thrill of riding the real estate boom through the mid 2000s. By the time the housing market crashed, I was burned out and started writing more and more and eventually found my way into the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program at Pine Manor College in Boston, MA (all while raising two children and managing a real estate company of one hundred and fifty people).

At Solstice I wrote my Young Adult crossover novel What The Valley Knows. And then I rewrote it, and rewrote it, and rewrote it, finally landing a publisher in Black Rose Writing. The novel debuted January 25, 2018 as a #1 Amazon New Release Bestseller in YA Romantic Mystery and Thriller and subsequently won the Young Adult National Indie Excellence Awards and the Young Adult Maxy Awards. My second Young Adult novel, The Lying Season, is about how one moment can destroy lives when five a five popular high school students unintentionally shoot a local homeless man and must decide whether to tell the police or hide their secret. It was published by Black Rose Writing September 9, 2021.

In 2017, I performed in Listen To Your Mother Baltimore and had such a wonderful experience that I bought the license for the Greater Berks, PA territory. We had a successful show in 2019 and my hope was to make the production a yearly Berks County Mother’s Day tradition, but COVID-19 disrupted the 2020 show schedule and halted the 2021 production. In the meantime, I divorced and relocated to Manhattan where I secured the theatrical license for the Big Apple. Listen To Your Mother NYC debuted April 1, 2023 at Theatre 71 off-off Broadway to an enthusiastic Off Off Broadway audience. In 2024, the production moved to the Off Broadway-sized theater at The Center At West Park and is now a staple of storytelling entertainment every spring on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. 

I love midwifing other people’s stories so much so that I created my own storytelling concept: LoveNotes–Real Stories. Real People Real Love. The world premier was a huge success in New York City February 10, 2024 at The Center at West Park and I look forward to making it an annual Valentine’s Day extravaganza. But LoveNotes! is more than a stage show. It’s also a book and a podcast, both of which will launch in late 2024. LoveNotes! is available for theatrical licensing in other cities. Reach out if you’re a creative entrepreneur interested in learning more. Let’s look for proof of love and spread some hope. 

My writing has been published in Writer’s Digest, Salon, Scary Mommy, Elephant Journal, Mamapedia, The Good Men Project, Grown & Flown, Parent.co, Bon Bon Break, the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop, Baltimore Style Magazine, Baltimore Child, and The Lighter Side of Real Estate.

It was a great thrill, after my elementary school theatrical snub, to perform at the famous Joe’s Pub in the Public Theater with Generation Women with my story Just Jump

I live, write, produce, and direct in New York City, and work as the CEO of SocRoc Soccer with my brother, but have family in Pennsylvania so a piece of my heart is always there. I love to run, read, drink tea, and cook Sunday dinner, and I don’t go anywhere without lipstick :-)!

Say hello on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Warmly,

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