January has a funny way of making everyone feel like they are required to rebrand themselves as if the calendar has issued a legally binding personality update. New year, new mindset, new habits, new handwriting, possibly a new soul. Meanwhile I am over here quietly opening the same notebooks, sharpening the same metaphorical pencils, and doing the exact same thing I have always done when I care about something. Researching. Studying. Lining things up. Making…
Always Ametra
Back in 2018 I wrote a blog post about a discovery that excited me more than it probably should have. I had stumbled onto an old short story that fit perfectly into the novel I was writing at the time. I called it patchwork writing. It felt like I had found a forgotten puzzle piece that clicked into place as if it had always belonged there. Seven years later the idea still holds true. Only…
Some people outline entire novels at a desk. Some conjure brilliant scenes in a coffee shop. For me, creativity likes to show up with wet hair. There is something about water that flips the switch in my brain from everyday life to pure imagination. Maybe it is the rhythm. Maybe it is the absence of distraction. Maybe my muse just likes a good shampoo. Whatever the reason I have lost count of the ideas that…
Every writer loves a good twist. The moment where a reader sits up a little straighter. The moment a quiet assumption shatters. The goal is always the same. Surprise them. Do not betray them. A twist is not chaos. It is clarity arriving with perfect timing. When done well it feels like light flooding into a dark room. Suddenly everything that came before makes sense. The reader might gasp. They might toss the book across…
I entered a writing contest recently. I was not chasing prestige. I was not trying to prove anything. I already won an award years ago with my debut novel, which is still wild to me considering it had enough formatting issues to make an editor burst into tears. This time I was mostly in it for the prize money. I am an indie author with bills, after all. If my work could give me a…
It began as an experiment. I had no intention of becoming my own audiobook narrator. Not when there were perfectly capable AI voices like Martin and Mary vying for the honor. Martin, my first choice, had warmth but occasionally took creative liberties that made me question his sobriety. Mary, on the other hand, had perfect pacing and flawless pronunciation, but her delivery felt like a polite voicemail from a distant cousin. At one point, Martin…
Every author dreams of the perfect launch. The moment when months or even years of work finally meet the world, wrapped in the kind of anticipation that makes hearts skip. What we rarely talk about is the silence that comes before it. The kind that settles in after the writing is done, when all that’s left is to figure out how to make people care without begging them to. There’s a strange kind of weight…
Some people talk to plants. I talk to characters… usually when they show up uninvited while I’m doing something else entirely. People sometimes ask if I’m working on my fourth book right now. If “working” means sitting at the keyboard, brow furrowed, typing furiously into the night, the answer is… not exactly. But if “working” means mentally rehearsing scenes while cooking, negotiating with characters while folding laundry, and collecting story fuel from everyday life like…
Some of us picked up language like it had been waiting in our mouths all along. Letters weren’t a mystery. Stories weren’t foreign. They felt like memory. And for those of us who began reading young—truly reading, not just reciting from repetition—there was a shift. A quiet imprint. Something in us rearranged itself around the rhythm of language. I wrote once before about learning to read at two. This was obviously not news to anyone…
There are moments in writing when the words come too easily. Not because the scene is simple, but because something within you has already lived it. The character moves, speaks, grieves, rejoices, and somehow your hands know what to do. You’re not inventing. You’re revealing. It’s as if your mind had already gone ahead, scouted the emotional terrain, and laid out the bones before you even arrived. I don’t talk much about this unseen intuition,…