I began writing when I was ten.

As a child, I lost myself in the stories I read—and found myself, as well. One day when I was ten, I was laying on my bedroom floor reading The Magic Treehouse when a realization interrupted:

I could add books to the world, not just consume them.

Ever since, I’ve been scribbling in notebooks and margins, filling document after document with words. I started by mimicking the stories I knew, dreaming up tales set in an imaginary version of the Wild West, with simplistic characters full of grit and an understanding of the world.

I’ve come a long way from that ten-year-old laying on the floor. For one, the ground isn’t quite so comfortable anymore. After years of teaching English and History, working as a librarian, and wrestling with what it looks like to live like Jesus on this side of eternity, my stories have changed, too.

Now they’re stories of questions. Stories that wrestle with what life looks like as a person of faith in a broken world. Good and bad aren’t always easy to distinguish, people are messy, and there’s a longing for better while living in the in-between.