The Glass Inkwell

There are stories you write. And then there are stories you bury. Paradise Island was the second kind. If you've been following along, you probably noticed I recently renamed Paradise Island  to Saltwater Between Us . That wasn't just a branding tweak. That was a reclamation. A quiet, salt-stung, sun-warmed reclaiming of something I almost convinced myself wasn't worth keeping. Let's rewind a little. I started my very first story in high school because a friend casually me

Ghost tours are a funny thing. Everyone pretends they’re there ironically. For the history. For the vibes. For the camp. We insist we’re not scared even as we cluster closer together, listening a little too carefully, glancing over our shoulders when the guide’s voice drops. I went on mine at night, when St. Augustine feels like it’s holding its breath. Cobblestones slick with age and humidity. Streetlamps casting that specific kind of light that turns every shadow into a pos

I’ve long accepted that my creative process looks less like a calm, candlelit genius-at-work montage and more like a crow collecting shiny objects during a caffeine high. My brainstorming notes—whether in Notion or scattered through my ever-growing family of notebooks—read like a crime scene of half-thoughts, crossed-out side quests, multiple timelines arguing in the margins, and at least one doodle of a dragon wearing sunglasses. And yet… somehow, out of this chaos, a story

It was 2 a.m. last night and I was sitting at my kitchen table surrounded by candlelight, two decks of cards, and a cup of tea that had gone cold twice already. The house was quiet except for the occasional creak of old wood settling and my own breathing, which had that particular rhythm of someone who was about to ask the universe a question they weren't entirely sure they wanted answered. Fun fact about being a writer who also reads tarot: sometimes you need to see the stor

A TED Talk Presented Live From Inside a Pillow Fort Growing up, I thought writers lived in cabins with typewriters. You know the ones. Woodsmoke. Snow falling gently outside. A single mug of coffee that somehow stayed hot for hours. Turns out writers mostly live in Google Docs and Notion, with bad posture, three half-finished drinks, and a browser tab open just in case we need to google something unhinged like “how long can a person survive on an alien moon without oxygen.”

How Obsidian Throne Went From “Spicy Romance Weekend Project” to “Oh… This Is a Whole World.” There are moments in a writer’s life when you suddenly realize you’re not driving your own story anymore. You’re gripping the wheel, but someone else’s taste is quietly pressing the gas, turning the blinker on, and adjusting your rearview mirror like they live there. For me, that moment with Obsidian Throne  hit like a pothole at midnight: I didn’t realize someone else’s taste had it

There’s something people don’t tell you when you decide to write a “cozy gothic murder mystery.” Namely: Everyone has an opinion about what that phrase is supposed to mean. Cozy readers expect warm drinks, low stakes, and the guarantee that the cat survives. Gothic fans want decaying manors, ancestral curses, and at least one scene where someone drifts dramatically down a hallway with a candle. And mystery diehards… oh, they have spreadsheets. Meanwhile, I’m over here like: “

I’ve always been a storyteller — I just didn’t realize it until the universe grabbed me by the shoulders a few years ago and went, “Ma’am, look at your life choices.” If something happened to me, everyone within a five-mile radius was going to hear about it. With props. With reenactments. With the kind of sound effects usually reserved for action movie trailers. The dramatic recap of that one time I accidentally told the Dunkin’ Donuts cashier “I love you” after she told me

Hello, friends — welcome to the new space. I’ve been off doing what writers do best: wandering through stories, tripping over emotions, and accidentally reorganizing my entire creative life in the process. You know. Tuesday stuff. I won’t pretend the past year didn’t leave its mark. Losing Mia cracked something open in me, and grief has a sneaky way of rearranging your priorities when you’re not looking. Eventually I realized that the way I’d been approaching my writing life

The day after Valentine’s Day, my world cracked a little. I had to say goodbye to my dog, Mia — my shadow, my co-pilot, my emotional support goblin, my best friend of over ten years. I can still see the moment our story began. I was working in my library system’s IT department back then, bouncing between branches teaching digital literacy classes. On that particular morning, the security guard waved me down. A cardboard box had been left out near the flagpole overnight. Ins

Okay, picture it. It's the summer of 2022. It's hot and the twentieth person has just come through the library doors and the first thing out of their mouth is "Whoo, it's hot out there."  And it was only 10:30 a.m. We open at 9. Yeah, it was gonna be a long day. So a coworker and I found ourselves randomly talking, and I said I wanted to do some National Novel Writing Month write-ins. This was obviously before NaNoWriMo became cancelled. Said coworker mentioned she'd never d