For two decades now, writing has been the quiet constant in my life.

It began with letters and journals. Over time it expanded into stories, essays, and the literary nonfiction that now shapes my work.

It was in a literature course at my time with Lipscomb University where I encountered a poem that would leave a permanent mark on me: John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14, often known as “Batter my heart, three-person’d God.”

The poem is a fierce plea for transformation—a desperate request for something greater than ourselves to break through our defenses and remake us.

Reading it felt like being struck by lightning.

Donne’s language is urgent and visceral, full of images of warfare, surrender, and spiritual struggle. The speaker describes the soul as a captured city, pleading with God to overthrow it in order to restore it.

That intensity fascinated me.

I began writing sonnets obsessively—about everything I saw, everything I felt, and everything I wondered about.

Something had shifted. Writing had stopped being a hobby and started becoming a calling.

Batter my Heart (Holy Sonnet XIV)
John Donne

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you 
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; 
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend 
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. 

I, like an usurp'd town to another due, 
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end; 
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, 
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue. 

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain, 
But am betroth'd unto your enemy; 
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, 
Take me to you, imprison me, for I, 

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, 
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. 

Today, my work is deeply influenced by the things that fascinate me most: human nature, moral complexity, resilience, and the strange ways our lives intersect with darkness and grace.

These interests ultimately led me to the stories I now tell in my Southern Gothic true crime series, where the focus is not sensationalism but understanding—how people become who they are, and how communities carry the weight of tragedy.

Now, my days are divided between managing a salon, the writing desk, and the lively chaos of my animal-filled home.

There are always people and animals to care for, stories to research, and pages waiting to be written.

It is not always quiet, nor is it easy.

But it is a life full of purpose, curiosity, and love.

And in the middle of it all, I continue doing the thing that first began with a single poem in a literature class:

I keep writing.