Joy as Survival

There’s a narrative that queer joy is frivolous, or that focusing on happiness somehow ignores the realities of discrimination, violence, or marginalization. But joy isn’t ignorance—it’s resistance.

Joy is what keeps us going when the world is heavy.
Joy is what reminds us that we’re more than trauma.
Joy is how we survive long enough to build something better.

Stories like Heated Rivalry don’t deny pain—they simply refuse to center it.

And for people like me, who live in quieter, more isolating places, that refusal is powerful. It pushes back against the idea that queerness must always be a struggle, that love must always be earned through suffering.

Watching Heated Rivalry come to life through Crave Canada was a whole different kind of emotional gut-punch.

Seeing two queer men, in love, treated with tenderness—on screen, with a promise of a happily ever after—felt like something I didn’t realize I’d been starving for. Not a tragic ending. Not subtext. Not “almost but not quite.” A real love story. A future.

I realized how rare it still is to see queer men given that much emotional space in mainstream media. And how much it mattered to see it in motion, with actors embodying that love with honesty and vulnerability.

Soft masculinity doesn’t erase strength. It expands it.
It says you can be tender and still be solid.
You can love deeply and still be grounded in yourself.

Some realizations don’t arrive gently.
Some arrive at 5 a.m., when the world is quiet enough that you can’t avoid yourself anymore.

I didn’t expect a piece of media to crack something open in me that years of reading, therapy-adjacent introspection, and careful self-identification hadn’t fully touched. But watching Heated Rivalry did exactly that.

Not because it “explained” gender to me — but because it made me feel something so deeply and so sharply that I couldn’t look away from it anymore.

I'm still early in this. 121 subscribers. Still figuring out what sticks. But I can tell you this: the people who've found me through YouTube are different from the people who find me anywhere else. They know my voice. They know my story. They're in it for the long haul.

The algorithm doesn't find readers. You do — by being the author they want to follow, one video at a time.

Being an indie author means wearing all the hats.

We're writers, editors, marketers, social media managers, graphic designers, event planners, newsletter creators, website managers, accountants, customer service representatives, and business owners—all while trying to keep the thing we love most alive: writing stories.

As writers, it's easy to get caught up in deadlines, word counts, and productivity. But creativity isn't something we can force indefinitely. Sometimes it needs sunlight. Sometimes it needs fresh air. Sometimes it needs a reminder that there's a whole world beyond our desks.

There’s something about Sundays that always makes me reflective.

Maybe it’s the quiet before a new week begins. Maybe it’s the pressure we sometimes put on ourselves to “get our lives together” before Monday morning arrives. Or maybe it’s simply the way creatives tend to carry unfinished ideas, half-written scenes, and long to-do lists around in our heads.

As writers, we talk a lot about accountability.
We talk about goals, routines, productivity, word counts, deadlines, and writing habits.

But something I’ve learned over the years is this:

A productive writing week usually starts before the week begins.

I thought writing a book would feel like:

✨ Inspiration
✨ Creativity
✨ Magical bursts of genius

And sometimes… it does.

But more often?

It looks like this:

🫠 Doubt
🫠 Rewriting the same paragraph 12 times
🫠 Staring at the screen wondering if any of it is good
🫠 Crying over fictional people like they’re real (because somehow, they are)

It’s messy.
It’s frustrating.
It’s deeply personal in ways I didn’t expect.

I quit one of my part-time jobs.

Not because everything is perfectly lined up.
Not because I’m already where I want to be.
But because I need the time to build the life I’m trying to step into.

There are some stories you write.

And then there are some stories that live with you.

Echoes of Us has been both.

This book has existed in some form for over fifteen years. It started as an idea, then a fragment, then something I kept coming back to over and over again—never quite ready to finish it, but never able to let it go.

For a long time, I didn’t understand why.

Now I do.

Publishing a book is exciting—but also nerve-wracking. In this post, I explain what ARC readers are, why they’re so important for indie authors, and how you can join the ARC team for my upcoming novel Echoes of Us.

For as long as I can remember, stories have been at the center of my life.

Not just reading them, but living inside them, imagining them, and eventually writing them. Over the years, that love of storytelling has taken me down some unexpected paths—from studying archaeology and working in environmental compliance, to consulting in Washington, D.C., to eventually returning to a quieter life where creativity could take up more space.

Writing retreats create connection, confidence, and clarity. Learn why I host them and explore Slay the Dragon or Kiss It and Self-Publishing 101.

Love, in an apocalypse, is rebellion.

It’s a refusal to let the world take everything.
It’s a way of saying: I’m still here. I still feel. I still care.
It’s a spark you cup in your hands and protect like a flame in the wind.

The first day of winter invites us to hold two truths at once:
That something is ending.
And something else is beginning.

We’re allowed to grieve what didn’t work. We’re allowed to celebrate how far we’ve come. And we’re allowed to imagine what’s next with hope — even if it’s still a little fuzzy around the edges.

Lately, music has been doing what it always does best for me: holding the emotions I don’t quite have words for yet, and then gently handing them back so I can put them on the page.

I’ve always written with music nearby. Sometimes it’s background noise, sometimes it’s the heartbeat of the scene. Music helps me tap into emotion first, before plot, before structure, before logic. It lets me feel what my characters feel: the ache, the longing, the quiet hope, the unraveling, and once I feel it, the words follow.

When I’m stuck, it’s rarely because I don’t know what happens next. It’s because I’ve lost touch with how it feels. Music brings me back.

Here are a few songs I’ve been absolutely obsessed with lately and why they’ve been living on repeat while I write.

I’ve been thinking a lot about gratitude, not in the glossy, performative way we sometimes see online, but the real kind: the warm, messy, deeply human gratitude that shows up in the everyday moments. The kind that reminds me that even on the hardest days, there is so much good woven through my world.

There’s something magical about the way October arrives. The air shifts, the light softens, and suddenly everything feels ripe for new beginnings. For me, October has always been one of the most special months of the year—not only is it my birthday month, but many of my most treasured travel memories have taken place in October. It’s a month full of adventure, reflection, and coziness all at once.

Fall has always been my favorite season. I love it all: the way the leaves change into shades of gold and red, the way a sweater feels just right on a cool morning, the sound of wind brushing through branches, and the return of hot drinks as a daily ritual. Even small things—like candles flickering in the early evening or pulling out my favorite blanket—carry so much comfort.