The Story Before the Stories

When I was a kid, I loved stories so much, I wrote them all down. Every year, my school held the “Young Authors” program. Each student was given a blank, hardcover book. We plotted, wrote, and illustrated them. We were authors, poets, and artists.

I still have mine.

Not because I had the foresight to save them, but because my mom did. Bless her, the original archivist of my creative chaos.

Thank goodness she did.

The Detour Years

I wrote all through college and into my early twenties, but I never thought of it as a career. I started story after story but never finished any. I knew I could write, but to write a whole book? That felt like trying to climb Mt. Everest in flip-flops.

So, like many writers, I tucked my dreams of books and writing away and did the adult thing. I got a job in logistics and supply chain management. Yes, it is exactly as thrilling as it sounds.

Life happened fast after that. I met my husband two months before he left for Air Force basic training, met his enormous family without him. It prepared me for doing a lot of things without him. It’s the military way. The next thing I knew 13 years, 4 dogs, 4 states, 2 kids, and a partridge in a pear tree flew by. I’d build a life that was full. But something was missing.

The Hard Pause

I left my writing and stories behind for a while. There were hard years that took up all the space in my mind where the stories used to live.

New places, new babies. A new version of myself trying to hold it all together.

Then came the pandemic, and the world stopped. My dad passed that year. He was in an assisted living center 1,000 miles away, and not being by his side when he passed broke something open in me.

In that space where grief lived, I remembered the stories again. The ones I promised I’d come back to some day.

The Return to Story

A package arrived from my mom one day.

Tucked inside? Five hardcover books. My childhood stories. The very beginning of my writing career.

I held them in my hands, and it all came rushing back. The joy, the creativity, the magic of words that can build words.

Books filled my filled my house, and my kids caught the bug, too. Somewhere in that swirl of life and memory, I found the Author Accelerator community. I learned to plan, structure, and coach stories in a whole new way.

Suddenly, it wasn’t just about find my voice.

It was about helping other writers find theirs, too.

The Full-Circle Moment

So, Here I am.

A book coach. A story midwife. A hype girl for overwhelmed writers who think they’re not “real” authors yet.

Every twist in my story led me right here.

To you. To your words. And to the work I love most.

I’m exactly where I’m meant to me, at exactly the right time.

And if you are here, reading this, maybe you are, too.