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Raised by Wind, Rooted by Survival

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  The Wyoming wind does not ask whether you are ready. It arrives when it wants to—hard, sudden, and impossible to ignore. It rattles windows, bends grass flat against the earth, lifts dust into the air, and finds every loose edge in a roof, a fence, or a person. You learn quickly that there is no arguing with it. You brace yourself. You lean into it. You keep moving. Long before I knew the word resilience, I understood what it meant to live in a place that demanded it. Wyoming is beautiful, but it is not always gentle. The landscape is wide and exposed. There are few places to hide from the weather. The summers can be dry and relentless. The winters can feel endless. The wind can move across the plains with nothing to slow it down. Growing up here taught me that survival is often quiet. It is not always dramatic. Sometimes it is simply getting up and doing what needs to be done. It is pulling your coat tighter, checking the doors, securing what might blow away, and carrying on wit...
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Taking My Place at the Author Table

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  No one tells you how vulnerable it feels to sit behind a table filled with books carrying your name. Writing is often private work. It happens quietly, in early mornings, late nights, stolen lunch breaks, and moments when a sentence refuses to leave you alone. For weeks, months, or even years, the story belongs almost entirely to you. Then one day, you place it on a table. You arrange the books so the covers face outward. You straighten the bookmarks. You check the price signs again, even though you already know they are correct. You wonder whether anyone will stop, whether they will pick up a book, and whether they will recognize some part of themselves inside the words you wrote. On August 8, I will be participating in the Fireweeds Festival at the Campbell County Public Library here in Gillette. I am excited, grateful, and carrying more nerves than I expected. I have attended events before. I have talked about my writing, shared poetry, and introduced people to the stories tha...
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Location: Gillette, WY, USA
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Why I Wrote Raised by Wind

 There are places that don’t just hold your memories. They shape them. For me, that place was the stretch of Wyoming prairie between the Rocky Mountains and the Black Hills. Wide-open space. Hard weather. Dust in the corners. Chores before comfort. Wind that never seemed to rest. It was a place of beauty, yes, but not the soft kind. The kind that got under your skin. The kind you didn’t always understand while you were living inside it. Raised by Wind came from that place. At first glance, this poetry collection may look like a book about Wyoming, prairie life, childhood, or rural memory. And in many ways, it is. The poems carry fence lines, gardens, chores, dirt roads, storms, seasons, and the kind of silence that only exists where the sky has room to stretch. But the deeper I worked with these poems, the more I realized this book was never only about the land. It was about what moved through it. The wind. The Place That Raised Me I grew up in a landscape where the weath...
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Location: Gillette, WY, USA
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The Author I’m Still Becoming

 I used to think becoming an author would feel like crossing a finish line. One day, the book would be done. The cover would be finished. The files would be uploaded. The publish button would be pressed. And then, somehow, I would feel different. More certain. More official. More prepared to stand in front of people and say, “Yes, I’m an author.” But what I am learning is that becoming an author does not happen all at once. It happens in layers. It happens the first time you take your own work seriously. It happens when you keep writing after the excitement wears off. It happens when you revise the scene instead of abandoning the story. It happens when you send the newsletter, post the update, set up the author table, and talk about the book even when your voice shakes a little. And it keeps happening long after the book is published. Saying the Word Out Loud There is something strange about calling yourself an author for the first time. At least there was for me....
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Location: Gillette, WY, USA
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Behind Every Finished Book Is a Private Storm

 A finished book looks simple from the outside. A cover. A title. A buy button. Maybe a smiling author photo. Maybe a social media post that says, “It’s live!” From the outside, it can look like the book simply appeared one day, polished and ready, as if the author walked calmly from idea to publication without tripping over doubt, edits, formatting problems, marketing decisions, or the terrifying little voice that asks, What if no one cares? But behind every finished book is a private world most readers never see. There are messy drafts. There are scenes that do not work. There are sentences you love that still have to be cut. There are hours spent staring at one paragraph because it almost says what you mean, but not quite. There are also the ordinary interruptions of real life. The job. The laundry. The dogs. The appointments. The groceries. The dishes in the sink. The days when your brain is ready to write, but your body is tired. The days when your body fin...
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Location: Gillette, WY, USA
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You’re Not Behind — You’re Becoming

Somewhere along the way, we started believing that growth should look like acceleration. Faster progress. Clear milestones. Visible achievement. A steady upward line that proves we are doing life correctly. By a certain age, we’re supposed to have things figured out. Careers stabilized. Creative paths defined. Bodies cooperating. Emotions neatly managed. Dreams either achieved or responsibly set aside. And when reality doesn’t match that timeline, the conclusion feels obvious. We must be behind. It’s a quiet thought at first. Easy to dismiss. But over time, it can become a steady background hum — shaping how we see our work, our healing, and even ourselves.
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Location: Gillette, WY, USA
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What to Cut — And Why It Hurts

 The hardest part of editing isn’t fixing what’s weak. It’s cutting what you love. Weak writing is easy to remove. It announces itself. It stumbles. It drags. It lacks clarity. But the lines you love? The ones that felt electric when you wrote them? The paragraphs you labored over until they finally clicked? Those are harder. Because cutting them feels personal.
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Location: Gillette, WY, USA
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