The Idea, the Place, and the Title (In That Order)

The story didn't start with Phoenix, or even with rain. It started with an idea I woke up with one morning: a person finding photos of themselves, ones they have no memory of taking, at places they’ve never actually been. I searched around to see if anyone else had already written something built on that premise and came up empty, which was enough to convince me it was a subject worth chasing. The title, A Rainy Day, didn't arrive until I was about halfway through writing it, once I understood who Roz actually was: someone who saves things back, who's been waiting on a change she's not sure is even coming.

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.