FIRST ever Author Signing Event 10.17.26

It’s still so strange to remember that I actually wrote and published a book.

Then there’s knowing that next month, my local library is hosting me for my first-ever author signing event.

What a weird time.

A little recap:

Several years ago, I began writing a memoir about some of the hardest seasons of my life.

I wasn’t entirely sure what I intended to do with it. I only knew I felt deeply compelled to tell the story—not because I believed my experiences were extraordinary, but because I hoped someone might recognize a piece of themselves in them.

And maybe they would know that darkness doesn’t last forever.

For nearly seven years, I returned to painful memories and tried to shape them into something meaningful.

Earlier this year, I stopped.

I had reached a difficult chapter—pun very much intended—but something about the manuscript had started to feel wrong.

The story was mine, but it didn’t belong only to me. There were real people tangled inside those memories, and I had no interest in exposing or hurting anyone simply because I had decided to write about my life.

At the same time, I found myself softening truths to protect things that hadn’t always protected me.

Eventually, it stopped feeling honest.

And I didn’t want to publish a dishonest memoir any more than I wanted to publish a cruel one.

So I closed the manuscript.

I haven’t reopened it since.

Instead, I started thinking about why I had wanted to write it in the first place.

It wasn’t the names, places, or circumstances that mattered most to me.

It was what survived them.

The lessons. The grief. The mistakes. The healing. The strange realization that life keeps unfolding after the chapter you once thought might destroy you.

Those were the truths I wanted to preserve.

And, as it turns out, fiction gave me somewhere to put them.

I’ve always been imaginative. I speak in metaphors probably more often than I speak plainly. Once I gave myself permission to invent the details, something clicked.

I could create new people.

New places.

New circumstances.

New wounds.

And still tell the truth.

That’s when Following the Stars began taking shape.

At first, I thought I was writing one book.

Apparently, I had more to say.

The story grew until I realized I was trying to rush emotional arcs that deserved room to breathe. So I stopped forcing everything toward a single ending.

One book became two.

Under a Different Sky was written alongside Following the Stars because, in many ways, they were one story all along.

Now Following the Stars is published.

People I’ve never met can hold it in their hands. They can meet Lucy and Summer and Wes. They can underline things, disagree with things, laugh at things I laughed at while writing them, and hopefully find something in those pages that belongs a little bit to them, too.

That part still doesn’t feel completely real.

But on October 17, 2026, I get to celebrate it in person at my first author signing event.

And because Under a Different Sky releases just two weeks later on November 1, I wanted to bring a little piece of what comes next with me.

I’ll be giving away something that means a lot to me:

my author proof of Under a Different Sky.

It is the first physical copy of the book I ever held—the copy that existed before anyone else could order one.

And one reader at the event gets to take it home before the book is officially released.

Which feels like a pretty perfect way to celebrate the people who followed the stars first.