For sixteen years, I stood in front of a classroom and told teenagers that following your dreams mattered. For me, that’s writing, and my students knew that. That it was worth the second draft, the awkward first paragraph, the risk of being read. The risk of failure. I meant every word of it. I still do. This is the story of how I finally quit teaching to write full-time.
What I didn’t tell them (because I hadn’t figured it out myself yet) was that I’d spent many of those same years writing in the margins of my own life. Long hours writing lesson plans and grading papers. Then, opening a different document and writing my own pages until late at night. A student asked me once, “Is teaching what you really want to do?”
There was a pause before I answered honestly. “I thought it was my dream at one time, but now it isn’t. I would love to be a full-time writer.
The student then asked me, “Why don’t you?”
I think it was that moment when I realized I wasn’t doing the very thing I told my students to do. I wasn’t following my own dream. In that moment, it hit me: the real reason I hadn’t was fear of being a failure.
This spring, I quit teaching to write full-time.
I won’t pretend that was a simple decision, or a brave one made without fear. Sixteen years is a vested pension. It’s a schedule I could set my life around. It’s a paycheck that showed up whether the writing was going well that week, or not. There were plenty of weeks it wasn’t going well. Leaving that for a career where the paycheck depends entirely on whether strangers want to read what I make up in my head is, by any practical measure, a terrible financial plan.
I did it anyway.
Why I’m Doing This Now
I’m currently writing Book 3 of The Secrets Trilogy, my southern gothic series about the secrets a small town buries, literally and otherwise, and I realized I was giving that story my leftover hours. My tired hours. The version of my brain that had already spent eight to ten hours grading, planning, and managing a room full of teenagers. My characters deserved better than my leftovers. So did I.
If you’ve read Where Secrets Stay (Book 1) or Where Secrets Sleep (Book 2), you already know I’m drawn to the kind of stories where the past comes back: crumbling houses, family secrets, someone who knows something but says nothing. That’s not an accident. Sixteen years in a classroom teaches you that everyone is carrying something, and most people are very good at hiding it. That’s the whole engine of a good psychological thriller, and I got a front-row seat to human nature for over a decade before I ever tried to write it professionally.
So what does this blog become now?
Once a week, I’ll be here with one of four things: a real abandoned place I’ve researched that’s bleeding into my fiction (the creepier, the better); a writing tip or prompt pulled from what I’m working on, including my 30 Day Writing Prompt series; craft advice from someone who spent sixteen years teaching this stuff before I started doing it full-time; and posts like this one, where I tell you the truth about what it actually looks like to leave a stable job to chase a writing career in your fifth decade of life.
I’m not doing this because I have it figured out. I’m doing it because I think the honest version of this journey (the doubt, the math that doesn’t quite work yet, the discipline it takes to treat this like a job instead of a hobby) is more useful to you, and more interesting, than a highlight reel.
If you’ve read either of my short stories already on this site (more to come), thank you. You were reading my work before I made this leap, and that means something to me. If you haven’t, that’s a good place to start while you wait on Where Secrets End (Book 3). You might want to also check out my standalone novels, The Truth Is a Lie and I Saw You.
Welcome to the process. I’m glad you’re here for it.
If you haven’t started The Secrets Trilogy yet, sign up for my email list HERE and I’ll send you the first chapter of Where Secrets Stay free, plus teasers and updates as Where Secrets End gets closer to its February 2 release.
Where Secrets End (Book 3) releases February 2, 2027.