_edited_edited_edited.png){kind=small}
_edited.png)
Favourite quote right now:
— The official vibe for 2026
THE ROAD SO FAR ...
ORIGIN STORY TIME
CIRCA 2007-ISH
At about 11, a friend showed me this book (Twins by Marcy Dermansky), which was fantastic despite it being wildly inappropriate for our age. Around the same time, that same friend's parents got divorced, and it (obviously) had a huge effect on her life. Between that book and my friend's situation, Troubled was born. I don't remember it not being called anything but that. I do remember writing pages and pages of the first few chapters in a spare exam pad during class—pages I still have, almost 20 years later. I've been a reader my whole life, and up until recently, other novels were my only writing coach (plus a few stand-out English teachers). I had no cooking clue what I was doing, and despite only being 12, I was very aware that the content and themes of this story (themes I'm only starting to understand—like, literally this year) were heavy, inappropriate even, for my age. Still, this thing lived in my head, rent-free. I wanted to read it, and no one else was going to write it. So I did.
STAGE 1: WRITE THE THING
JAN / FEB 2018 (RIGHT AFTER I TURNED 23)
Those pages I wrote in class? I'd come home and transcribe them to Word on my computer. They were not masterpieces. Writing trenches, man. Wrote the first 10 chapters. Turned 13. Sat on them. Turned 16—same as my MC. Could finally "get" her, realized it was all crap, changed my approach, and re-wrote the first 10. Finished high school and then really "got" my MC, scrapped it again. Went to college to study contemporary vocal performance. Got a little living under my belt. Independence, driving, heartbreak. Nothing like a broken heart to motivate you to finish writing a heavy YA contemporary about an angry teenager, right? Well, lowkey, that kinda did it. That last rewrite made it through to the full-length first draft, and I wrote the last 2 chapters in one go, staying up till, like, four in the morning, cheered on by my trusty pink lava lamp.
LIFE CHECK: NOW WHAT?
(DON'T EVEN ASK)
I mentioned that I had no writing coach other than other books? Yeah, well. Writing a book doesn't mean you know what to do with it. I had no idea what to do with this thing. After college (where I learned that as much as I love making music, professional performance was not necessarily my jam), so, of course, I got a job. All the while, I was eDiTiNg my book, again—no clue what that even meant. The only consolation is that, while I was in this weird writing limbo, I was blissfully unaware that I was, like, totally floundering. In hindsight, now that I actually do know what I'm doing (we hope), this was ... a time.
GETTING THE BALL ROLLING
LOCKDOWN AND BEYOND
What did you do during quarantine? I shaved my head, went vegan, gave music another go, recorded my songs in a closet, and entered a contest for self-published musicians and lost to an "indie" with a professional-level music video. (Good for them, though.) My songs are still on SoundCloud, and I do wanna get them properly recorded and self-published on Spotify, but Troubled still has its claws in me. When the world went back to normal, I got a new job, fell back into eating eggs and dairy (but not meat—vegetarian forever, baby), and got back to editing. And when the internet heard figured out my objective, this video popped on my feed—and totally changed the game. In fact, I owe a lot of my momentum to just, like, binging Abbie Emmons's content. (Girl is a born teacher.) Fast forward to today: I now have a plan. And a WEBSITE.
STAGE 2: FINAL EDITS
CURRENT TASK: PREP MANUSCRIPT FOR BETAS
Ah, editing. A major pain in the ass for most writers—but not this one. I've always had a thing for grammar and formatting. After deciding to self-publish, I took a course in copy-editing and proofreading, and discovered it's actually kinda my superpower. However, editing superpowers don't grant me the ability to be objective about my own work, so I can't do it alone. At this point, the manuscript has undergone a few rewrites, and I've completed all the developmental edits (basically all the issues with the story itself, big-picture stuff). Now I'm just fine-tuning the details, inserting last-minute jokes, crying a little. Once I've done all I possibly can, I hand my firstborn to the mercy of my beta readers, whose job it is to give me brutally honest feedback on the story. After that, it's off to the professionals ...
Now you're all caught up! If you read all this, you're awesome. I like you. You can stay. FWI, expect updates as soon as each stage is complete, so check in soooooon.
Can't wait that long? Join my mailing list! Who knows, you might even get some behind-the-scenes stuff (character profiles, early EXCERPTS of the book) before anyone else ...
