Behind the Books

Before the story reaches the page.

Some begin with a character. Others with a question, an image, or one idea that refuses to leave me alone. This is where I share what happens between that first spark and the finished story, including the ideas, discoveries, unexpected detours, and occasional chaos that live behind the books you see on the shelf.

From My Writing Desk

What’s taking up space in my head right now.

The stories currently taking up space in my head, my notes, and probably far too many open documents.

Final Editing

The First Vow Trilogy · Book One

Where the Vow Still Burns

First Draft

Tales Beyond the Roll · Gildie & Cera

Kindness First, Then Claws

Story Origins

Every world has a beginning.

The First Vow Trilogy

Where the First Vow Began

The First Vow began nearly ten years before I finally wrote it.

I was sitting at one of my husband’s wrestling shows when an image suddenly appeared in my head. It came with such a strong sense of urgency that I immediately grabbed a pen and whatever paper I could find and started trying to capture it before it disappeared.

I didn’t know the whole story yet. I didn’t know all the characters, the history, or even everything that moment meant. I just knew I couldn’t let it go.

That image eventually became the climax of The First Vow Trilogy, and somehow it stayed with me for nearly a decade while the rest of the story slowly found its way around it.

Eventually, I finally found the courage, along with a healthy dose of hyperfocus and obsession, to sit down and write the story that had been waiting all those years.

Tales Beyond the Roll

How Tales Beyond the Roll Began

I’ve never been very good at making a character and leaving it at the character sheet.

By the time I sit down to play, I’ve usually already started building a world around them. I want to know who they are, where they came from, what they care about, and all the little things that may never make it onto the sheet at all. Some of these characters stay with me for years. Others only get a few hours at the table. Either way, I have a habit of getting attached.

And then we play.

The characters collect friendships, ridiculous mistakes, running jokes, victories, heartbreaks, and stories none of us could have planned ahead of time. After putting so much of myself into them, I found it surprisingly hard to simply leave all of it behind when the game was over.

It actually started with my very first character, Silhanna. She began as little more than a filled-out character sheet, but her adventure kept growing for years. Because Silhanna kept a journal in the game, I eventually started keeping one too, writing down the campaign through her eyes and in her voice.

That journal was really the first step toward what would eventually become Tales Beyond the Roll: finding a way to keep the characters, memories, jokes, and adventures that had become far too important to disappear when the dice were put away.

Ironically, Silhanna still doesn’t have a novel planned.

After seven years, her adventure hasn’t even finished yet.

The Story Changed

Sometimes the story knows what it needs before I do.

Stories have a habit of changing while I’m writing them. Characters grow, ideas shift, and sometimes something that made perfect sense at the beginning becomes something entirely different by the end.

The First Vow Trilogy

When One Story Became Three

The First Vow was never content to stay one book.

The first draft took one path. The second draft veered in a very different direction. Somewhere in the middle of trying to make sense of both, I realized the story was asking for more space than a single novel could give it.

What started as one book eventually became a trilogy, not because I wanted to stretch it out, but because I wanted to make room for everything the story was becoming. There was more happening than one book could carry well, more room the characters needed, and more of the journey that deserved to be told fully.

In the end, becoming a trilogy was what allowed the story to hold all of it, the version it began as, the version it became, and the version it was always trying to be.