Sometimes you post back-to-back weeks. Days, even.

Until summer arrives.

You spend your days going around town, bringing kids from here to there and back again, only to begin the whole damn thing at the top the next morning.

Routine. Ruinous routine.

There can be a strange cruelty to the creative process. You make something. Tear it apart. Make it again. Find the flaws, press until they hurt. Nobody asks you to. Nobody is watching. You return anyway.

Somewhere along the way, keeping it to yourself becomes part of the punishment. A little emotional masochism. You convince yourself there’s more work to be done, another wound to open, another reason to remain hidden among the things you’ve made.

And when you finally find the strength to let those creations leave your hands, there’s a fragile hope that something will carry all those moments, those creations, whatever the hell they might have been, beyond the confines of your own little world.

Into someone else’s.

I owe a local shop owner a great deal of thanks for inviting me to sell my book and read some of my work on a fantastically autumn Saturday night.

There’s something frightening about reading your own words aloud. Words you’ve dug into, suffered over, bled for, even. Giving them a voice in a room full of strangers. Watching people listen to something you once kept entirely to yourself.

And when those words are met with appreciation, when something you created alone finds a home in someone else, there’s a peculiar kind of electricity to it.

Enough to remind you why you do the damn thing in the first place.

I’m also working on a monthly letter, something a little different, something more intimate. Add yourself to the email waitlist here.

First things first, though.

It’s time to finish the edits and beta reads for my next collection, the violence we mistook for love.

I’ve cut two stories to make room for one of my new all-time favorites.

His name is Alden.

You’ll meet him soon.