I had the idea for On the Clock on a golf course of all places. My son was playing in a tournament, the sun was shining, the birds were chirping—and suddenly, a character appeared in my head. I opened the Notes app on my phone and started typing. What began as a simple outline quickly turned into full-blown character development. They came to life so vividly, it felt like I’d met them before.

That evening, we were sitting on our patio, replaying the day’s tournament when I blurted out, “I think I’m going to do a thing.” My family looked at me like I grown a second head. I started explaining the story and introducing the characters. Funny enough, the antagonist, Veronica, was originally named “Samantha,” but my son Brady suggested the change—and it fit like a glove.

From there, the whole family joined in. My husband, Jeff, and Brady helped brainstorm scenes, tweak dialogue, and even pick locations. It became our nightly ritual: talk about the day, talk about golf, then I’d read what I’d written.

Here’s the truth—I’m brand new to this. Like, reeeeaaaallllyyyy new. It started as a fun hobby, then a passion project, and suddenly I thought, “Wow… this might actually be good enough to publish.”

I wrote the entire manuscript in Microsoft Word—because that’s what you do when you have no idea what you’re doing. It worked fine until it was time to actually publish. The formatting was a mess. After chatting with a few agents and a publisher, Jeff and I decided to self-publish through KDP. I say “we,” because it truly became a family project.

And let me tell you—I did everything backwards. I discovered Kindle Create and thought, “Great! This is easy!” (First red flag: if it’s easy, you’re probably doing it wrong.) It looked good until it came time for edits. Kindle Create doesn’t have spellcheck—and once your book is imported, you can’t re-upload it to Word. Cue the frustration.

So after author copies, and more edits, and more ugh, we still ended up with 21 misspelled words in the published version. Can you tell I’m new at this? I agonized over it at first… then I laughed. Because what else can you do?

Now I’m onto Book #2 — Accidental Arrangement.

After surviving the Great Kindle-Create/Microsoft-Gate of 2025, I upgraded to Atticus, which formats as you write, previews beautifully, and has spellcheck. Hallelujah.

Long story short: I’m learning as I go. I’m giving myself grace—and I hope my readers do, too. Because if you give me another chance… Accidental Arrangement is SO good.