Welcome to the Afterlife
It all began with an idea, a what-if statement, a premise. From there it turned into something more. The mystery, a plot—
A young woman who doesn’t know what she wants, but what she has isn’t it.
In WELCOME TO THE AFTERLIFE, a young woman whose fear is to end up just like her parents searches for her recently deceased father after finding a hidden journal within his belongings.
Young and married, living in the Midwestern suburbs, Iris was already following a path that didn't quite agree with her. But now, after reading her father's darkest secrets, Iris, who has a baby on the way and wants so badly to believe that there's life after grief, is second-guessing herself, her marriage, and motherhood.
Plagued by moving objects, flickering lights, and nightmares so real she feels as though she is living them, Iris's fear of following in her father's footsteps turns into a deadly obsession— one that sends her straight into The Afterlife.
Stupid, Pretty
The brutal breakup, online dating in the early aughts, and a narrator’s nostalgic deep dive into T9 texting, low-rise jeans, and overly-sexualized pop culture.
Sex and the City meets Lena Dunham’s Girls. Or, a funny Taylor Swift album.
STUPID, PRETTY —contemporary women’s fiction/ humor— follows college-aged Alice circa 2010 who, with early-aughts technology, enters the online dating scene immediately following the breakup of her high school “sweetheart.” This story is narrated by Alice’s future self, a 40ish-year-old published romance novelist on the rise. Through penning a letter to her ex in the second person— “You” — an assignment given to Future Alice by her therapist to help her break through a stubborn spell of writer’s block—Future Alice analyzes how this toxic relationship played a part in skewing Young Alice’s views of romance, men, and self-worth and how those issues have followed her 20 years later.
Writing is like going to the gym— I do it to stay happy and healthy. I do it because it makes me feel good. I do it because if I didn’t, I’d be a miserable grouch who watches too much TV.
I’m a morning person. I like waking up early. I like drinking coffee in silence with my laptop. Light a candle, start the fireplace, me in my daytime jammies—that’s how my perfect day would start—But—that’s not always how it works, and so, my writing process is ever-changing. It depends on the book, the chapter, the day of the week. What I do know is that I get incredibly irritable, maybe even a bit manic, when I don’t touch my WIP for days at a time. Sure, there are intentional moments of gestation that comes with any project, but when it comes down to getting my butt in a chair, I’m disciplined and focused.
I do a lot of binge writing—two or three days of the week where I sit down and let the words flow. When I’m not so focused, I use the Pomodoro Technique and squeeze in 250 words here, 100 words there. And if the week has been a week (we all have them), then Fridays are there to pick up the slack. Fridays, no matter the week, belong to my novels. It’s where I get large chunks of uninterrupted time to get BIG work done.
On Tuesday Nights, I Workshop.
I belong to a weekly writing workshop who has seen every chapter of my novels. I have taken classes from Gotham Writers Workshop, CRAFT TALK, Inked Voices, Jane Friedman, Amy Collins, Chelsea Cain, and Chuck Palahniuk. I have invested in quality editors and continue to enhance and strengthen my craft by reading novels by authors I love, subscribing to various forms of continuing education, and reading craft book after craft book.
WELCOME TO THE AFTERLIFE is a domestic suspense novel that I am actively querying to literary agents. STUPID, PRETTY is my humorous, women’s fiction WIP that was accepted into the 2024–2025 StoryStudio Chicago NIAY program—a selective writing cohort led by author Lindsay Hunter that workshops, studies the craft, and provides accountability toward the goal of completing a novel over the span of one year.
Where would I be without the writing community? On the couch, miserable, watching too much trash television.
P.S. I really do love watching trash television.