About

I have also spent years cultivating rare, regionally adapted vegetable and flower varieties, many of which trace their origins to indigenous nations and cultures worldwide. He has formerly worked for Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and Roughwood Seed Collection.

In addition to my literary work, I am a passionate visual artist and photographer. My photographic lens is drawn to liminal spaces: forest edges, forgotten fields, the beauty of nature through flowers and plants, and the quiet dignity of rural life. I believes that both photography and writing serve as vessels for truth-telling, emotional transmutation, and place-based witnessing.

My Writing

I tend to return to the same questions even when the stories themselves look very different. I write a lot about memory, place, inheritance, identity, grief, belonging, and what we carry forward, whether we mean to or not. I am interested in the ways the past remains present—in families, landscapes, relationships, traditions, and even the stories we tell ourselves about who we are.  Nature also finds its way into nearly everything I write. Plants, weather, seasons, gardens, forests, and the land are rarely just background. They often become part of the story's language. A seed can hold history. A garden can become an archive. A storm can reveal something a character has been avoiding. I like exploring the point where the natural world and human experience begin reflecting one another.

Something strange is usually nearby, too. I am drawn to folklore, mythology, the supernatural, magical realism, Southern Gothic traditions, and moments when ordinary life becomes slightly unfamiliar. I am less interested in explaining away the strange than I am in asking what it reveals about the people who encounter it.

Across genres, I think much of my work comes back to what survives, what changes, what is inherited, and what we finally decide to let go.

I rarely begin a project with only a plot. Usually there is an image, a place, a character, a title, a plant, or some question that will not leave me alone. Once I know what the story seems to be asking, I tend to build outward from there.

I am a fairly heavy outliner. I like knowing the shape of a story, where the major turns are, and what each section needs to accomplish before I begin drafting in earnest. That structure actually gives me more freedom while writing because I can concentrate on character, atmosphere, language, and the unexpected things that happen along the way without constantly wondering where the story is going. At the same time, I do not think an outline should become a cage. Characters change. Better ideas arrive. A scene sometimes takes the story somewhere I didn't plan. I am willing to follow those moments when they make the book stronger.

Writing Approach

I also tend to write in intense bursts. Once I am fully inside a project, I can become very focused, sometimes moving through large sections quickly before stepping away and returning with a more critical eye. Revision is where I start thinking more deliberately about the reader: pacing, clarity, emotional payoff, atmosphere, and whether the story gives someone enough reason to keep turning pages.

I don't approach every book the same way, and I don't particularly want to. I enjoy moving between literary fiction, Southern Gothic, speculative work, poetry, nonfiction, drama, and other forms. What matters more to me than fitting neatly into a genre is creating something with a distinct voice, a strong sense of place, and enough underneath the surface that the story stays with the reader after it ends.

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