As a writer, I create heartfelt romances and enchanting fantasy worlds. I blend emotion and imagination to create stories that celebrate love, connection, and the magic of everyday life.
I spend my days with my husband, two children, and five pets. When I'm not writing, I read, hike, and dream of my next story.
As someone who leans into writing about small towns and romance, I often get asked what places inspire me. In short, most small towns in Texas are a huge inspiration for me. I grew up in a small town that had 2,500–3,000 people—now it has a booming population of 70K! When I grew up, the school district I was in had two elementary schools, two middle schools, one junior high, and one high school. The schools were also combined with the other small neighboring town.
Last week, I wrote about my writing journey and how much it has changed over the last couple of decades. In that post, I wrote about how I let a professor and my battle with finding the right medication for my mental health block my writing for many years.
It will be 15 years this coming August since I graduated from college with my BAs in Communication Studies and Psychology and my minor in English. I am roughly 12 or fewer hours away from a BA in English. I originally went to college to be an English teacher, then switched to English with an emphasis on creative writing, and later moved to Communication Studies and Psychology.
I mentioned this and last week’s newsletter (PS you can subscribe here) about how reading is important to the writing and drafting process. For a long time I was worried that reading while I’m writing and drafting would hinder my own voice. But now that I am back to my roots of being an avid reader I am personally finding that it is so important to the writing process. This year I set a goal to read at least 12 books if not more. That means at least one book a month! Here are the books I’m most excited to read this year.
Something I have discovered as a writer is that it can be a very lonely existence—or hobby—to have. While there are countless book clubs, finding a supportive writing community often feels like searching for a needle in a haystack. It can take a lot of digging and kissing a few frogs to find a prince (or princess) of a writing group. The perfect ones often seem like narwhals: you know they exist, but you can’t help but wonder if they’re actually mythical creatures. (And yes, it wasn’t until my 30s that I realized narwhals are, in fact, real.)
We are seven days into 2025, and it already feels like quite a whirlwind! On the last day of the year, the shower in the en suite of our primary bedroom completely stopped working. Then, almost all the plumbing in our house quit, even though we still had water. After some digging and investigating, we discovered that several dens of mice had essentially destroyed the plumbing in our house.
Margaret Atwood
