why start this blog?

I’ve tackled storytelling in many forms. I got my degree in music and developed a career as a film composer for a time. Working with scripts and directors offered a unique angle of storytelling that I still adore. I also took a frankly absurd number of literary studies courses for someone who didn’t major in it, but something about analyzing what makes books tick always called to me. It was around that time that I began writing “for realsies.”

To that point, writing fantasy stories has been my dirty little secret. Ever since I could hold a pen and (mostly) spell, I’d been penning stories for myself. Often derivatives of books I was obsessed with at the time, and never for anyone’s eyes but mine. My problem was I’d never seen anyone take fantasy seriously and never thought my silly little ideas would do anything but raise eyebrows.

The turning point came in my junior year of college when I took a class called Religion, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy, which tackled how religion often serves as a foundation for world building in the science fiction and fantasy genres, and how many cultural questions it answers with its inclusion (or its specific exclusion). My mind was utterly blown: it was the first time anyone had proven to me that the genres I most adored were in fact worthy of analytical study, worthy of academic discourse in the same way literary fiction has always been. In a way, it gave me permission to take my own craft seriously.

This became my mission. I learned to read with a different lens, not simply enjoying or disliking books but asking why; I devoured as many “On Writing” books as a could get my paws on. I had also finally found “the story.” A book I really felt I could finish. After countless failures and half-finished ideas, I’d set a personal challenge to tell this story in full, just to prove I could, and threw myself into a woodshed effort. One book spiraled into a trilogy, into a six-part series. By November of 2021, I bolstered up enough courage to query the first of these. It was a hot mess, earning one single full request and a wake up call to reevaluate my relationship to writing, which had become unhealthy. (Shout out to the then-undiagnosed neurodivergence.)

Through the many growing pains, I connected with some amazing writers and found a tight knit community of peers. As I honed my skills as a beta reader and sounding board for my friends’ stories, I came to the realization that this was work I deeply enjoyed, and I was good at it. My freelance editing career started officially around 2020, and with every new client and new story I get to shape, my love for the craft deepens.

It's now my hope to give back and offer a hub for those writers who, like me, didn’t know where first to turn. I hope I can offer someone else the permission they need that their stories matter and it’s worth the time and effort to tell them well.