Before the Noise: Why We Had to Introduce the Echo Sooner

We didn’t plan to change anything. Chapter 4 was working. The story flowed. Jonas’s experiences with friendship, belonging, and early disillusionment were rich with meaning—and we had already

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When the Chapter Isn’t Finished: Returning to Belonging

Sometimes you think you’re done. The chapter’s complete, the arc is strong, the themes are clear. You close the document, take a breath, and move on. Until something

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Chapter 7 Exile and Discovery Finds Its Shape

Some chapters arrive like thunder. Others, like this one, arrive in fragments—quiet, scattered, insistent. Exile and Discovery, Chapter 7 of my book-in-progress, didn’t come fully formed. It came

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Tulips Don’t Wait: Jonas Wilder’s First Song

How a single flower opened the door to a lifelong dialogue between self and world. In the early pages of The Echo and the Voice, a moment unfolds

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Shaping Belonging: How Chapter 4 Found Its Soul

When I first outlined Chapter 4 of The Echo and the Voice, I thought I was simply documenting a transitional time: the awkward, in-between years of adolescence, where

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The Quiet That Came First

Long before the first song, there was a memory that never let go. Sometimes, in the process of writing, you discover that a story demands something deeper of

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