This month has been a blur of pre-book‑release madness.

Event bookings. Press releases. Hardcover uploads. Audiobook narrators. All of it happening at once.

To help get word out, I ambitiously, and foolishly, committed to posting every day on social media leading up to June 4th. Then, creating Amazon ads, messaging friends and followers, a two-day book signing in Knoxville, tweaking and editing little details in the book (an extra quotation mark appeared, " trying to wreck me)!

Everything is rocketing toward June 4. Eight days left. Then I’ll take one big breath before diving back in, because there is a 3-5-7-9-11-30-day post-launch strategy to pursue. Because millions of readers still don’t know my stories exist. Yet.

And honestly? I’m finally getting better at talking about my writing out loud.

THIS WEEKEND! Nashville Book Fair: May 30th

New May subscribers will be entered to win a $50 gift card. The winner will be announced in June’s newsletter.

Memorial Day. Shrimp boil.

A couple handfuls of previously unknown Cookeville residents, and suddenly my books are part of the conversation without me forcing it. That magic moment when someone asks, “What do you do?” and you get to unleash a controlled burst of self‑promotion.

And after inhaling the spicy sausage and ripping the legs off the shrimp, I made a sale! One more soul claimed from the one‑in‑a‑million wilderness.

Amidst the fight to get my work into the right hands, I am grateful for the hands that have held my books, the hands posting a video about my stories, the hands that hit the review tab on Goodreads or Amazon and took a moment to write a few kind words.

These are the hands that carry the torch when my own are tired, the hands that pass the story from reader to reader like a secret no longer worth keeping.

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