What I've Been Working On This Month

This month split pretty evenly between finishing something old and starting something new, which is about as normal as my desk ever gets.

A Ghost Like Me went back to my editor, Ryan, after I'd let it sit untouched for about six months. That distance turned out to be the best editing tool I didn't know I had. I'd read a paragraph and think, wow, I wrote that 🥰, and two paragraphs later, wow, I wrote THAT? 🤢🤮. The big structural task was shifting the entire manuscript's tense, which forced me to read every single sentence instead of skimming past the ones I already knew by heart. In the process I found a pet word I'd used more than seventy times and managed to whittle it down to nineteen.

From Rough Draft to Finished Story: My Process

Every story begins the same way: with a blank page.

Getting the story out of your head and onto the page is often the hardest part. It took me a long time to accept that I didn’t need every sentence to be perfect before moving on. In fact, trying to make every paragraph flawless usually meant I wasn’t making any progress at all.

Writers generally fall into two camps: plotters and pantsers.

I love the smell of fresh ink in the morning!

The latest issue of Backwoods Survival Guide is heading to newsstands coast to coast May 29th 2026 — and it's got my byline in it!