There are moments when nothing obvious is wrong, and yet your body reacts like something is. You’re sitting at the table, driving home, or lying in bed, and suddenly your mind starts replaying something you said or did. Maybe it was a conversation that felt awkward. Maybe it was a decision you’re second-guessing. Then the thoughts start stacking. Maybe I messed that up. Maybe I’m not as capable as they think. Maybe they’re going to figure out I don’t belong here. For some peo

There’s a strange tension that shows up every time I reach the end of a story. I’ve recently wrapped up Lucky , and on paper, it’s done. The arc is there. The threads are tied well enough to call it a conclusion. And yet, it doesn’t feel like the end of Lucky’s story. That’s not a teaser. It’s not me hinting at a sequel or trying to be clever. It’s just the honest feeling that sometimes a story stops because it should , not because the character has nothing left to say. Knowi

I’ve been spending time lately with a character named Lucky . That’s about as much as I’m willing to say right now. What I can share is this: stepping into his world has been familiar . Not in a loud or overwhelming way. More like something I’d known once and hadn’t visited in a while. It gently pulled at me, calling me back to yesteryears I didn’t realize were still waiting. Lucky isn’t a blank slate. He walks into the story carrying weight, instincts, habits, and silences t

Every writer has places their mind drifts when the world finally lets them breathe. This is one of mine. I didn’t sit under this tree looking for meaning. I wasn’t working on a chapter or trying to shape a metaphor. I was just taking a moment, boots in the grass, sky stretching out farther than my thoughts could travel and somehow ended up wandering into that familiar in-between space again. It happens more often than I plan. It’s not inspiration. Not clarity. Just a quiet em

Writing Valuing Echoes  has been some of the hardest work I’ve done and not because the material was complicated. It’s hard because it forced me to slow down long enough to sort through a lifetime of experiences, lessons, and internal battles… and decide what actually belonged on the page. When you’ve spent years learning from leaders, books, the military, mentors, faith, and even painful moments, it’s easy for your voice to get buried under everyone else’s. This book made me

Writing Beneath Us  (what started as a tongue-in-cheek “reptilian story”) has been an unexpected challenge, one that’s forced me to find balance between fiction and truth. It began as a joke. A local sinkhole. A few sarcastic updates. Then somewhere along the way, it started taking shape as something deeper, a story about community, survival, and the parts of ourselves that crawl up from the dark when the ground gives way. But I’ll be honest, breaking into fiction has been to

I’ve always had a few projects running at once. Some people call it distraction, I call it momentum. Right now, I’m slowly working on several: What We Carry Forward , the continuation of Between the Echoes , which explores what healing looks like after the dust has settled. Beneath Us , which started as a sinkhole story but has evolved into something deeper (and stranger) about survival, community, and humor in chaos. The Values Project , built around an exercise I’ve used wi

There are moments in life when everything seems to be settling into place then, out of nowhere, the ground gives way. Sometimes that’s just a metaphor. In my case, it was literal. A sinkhole opened up next to my house. At first, it was chaos, phone calls, measurements, and trying to wrap my head around what 50 feet wide and 40 feet deep really  means… all while I was supposed to be launching a new book at the Scarecrow Festival. Life has a funny way of testing your sense of t

You hit “publish.” You wait. You refresh the page. Nothing. It’s that strange mix of hope and silence that every writer, or whatever I...

I assume there’s a moment every “real” writer hits. At least, there’s one I seem to hit quite frequently. It’s that point where you stare...

I’ve been asked more than once: “How much of Chasing Echoes is real, and how much did you make up?” The answer isn’t as clean as people...

In some of my echoes, I’ve referenced things like “shifting my grip” or “the mat.” Those words didn’t just come out of thin air. They’re...

When I wrote Not My Flag to Raise in Between the Echoes: The Reality of PTSD , it wasn’t just about the flag. It was about the moment....

“But every one of us walks beside the echo of something. And if you listen long enough, you might hear your own.” Those were the closing...

I never had much love for writing in school. If you handed me an essay assignment, I’d stare at the page like it was a punishment....

When I first sat down to write Between the Echoes , I thought the hardest part would be remembering. In reality, the harder task was...

“The line between what happened and what we remember.” There’s a line I walk every time I sit down to write. Sometimes it’s razor thin,...

"Ideas captured in the moment, waiting to find their place or remain as echoes." For a long time, I told myself I’d write someday. I had...