On storytelling, becoming an author, and the strange little pieces of a life that eventually become fiction.

There is something slightly surreal about having a website with my name at the top of it.

Maybe even more surreal is the fact that you're here reading something I wrote on purpose.

Hi. I'm Haley.

I'm an author, an aspiring social worker and therapist, a chronic researcher of whatever has captured my attention that particular week, and someone who has apparently reached the stage of adulthood where drinking something warm and staring at trees qualifies as an activity.

I’m also the mother of a brilliant and beautiful teenager, and married to the man of my dreams whom I’ve known for fifteen years now. We have a five-year-old German Shepherd named Jax; a two-year-old Lab-mix named Hershey; and an orange tabby cat named Duncan who recently turned a year old.

Jax is a giant teddy bear, except when it comes to the cat. Hershey is a lovable menace who loves to snuggle but also loves to eat inanimate objects like glowsticks and house-shoes, sometimes dirt, too. And Duncan chooses violence on a daily basis.

We have the scars to prove it.

I live in northwest Louisiana, not terribly far from where I grew up. I love books, music, nature, psychology, thunderstorms, stars, and stories about complicated people. I'm fascinated by the human brain. I believe relationships matter enormously. I have a habit of wondering why people do the things they do, especially when the easiest explanation isn't necessarily the truest one.

I also really, really don't like chamomile tea.

It tastes like drinking a flower.

Now that we've covered the important biographical information, we can move on.

I didn't exactly decide to become a storyteller.

I've loved writing for as long as I can remember.

Before there were published novels or author pages or ISBNs, there was simply the feeling of having something in my head and needing somewhere to put it.

Stories have always made sense to me that way.

I've also always had a knack for storytelling—not necessarily in the grand I was destined to become a novelist sort of way, but in the much less glamorous sense that I notice details. I remember conversations. I think about what someone might have meant instead of only what they said. I can take a relatively ordinary event and somehow turn telling my sister about it into a fifteen-minute production.

She knows.

My sister has been part of my relationship with writing for a long time, too. She has been someone I could bounce ideas off of, laugh with, tell stories to, and eventually even invite into the strange little world I've created around my books.

But fiction wasn't actually my first attempt at telling a story that mattered to me.

At one point, I wrote a memoir… well, half of one.

And although that project and my novels are very different things, I think writing about real life taught me something that eventually became fundamental to the way I approach fiction:

The facts of what happened aren't always the most interesting part of a story.

Sometimes it's what happened inside a person because of it.

What did they believe afterward?

What did they stop believing?

What did they learn to fear?

What did they learn to tolerate?

Who did they become to survive it?

And, eventually, can they become someone else?

Those questions followed me out of nonfiction.

They also followed me into social work.

The person and the story behind the behavior

I'm deeply interested in trauma, human behavior, relationships, psychology, and the ways our experiences shape how we move through the world.

That's a large part of why I'm pursuing social work to become a therapist.

I don't find people interesting because they're perfect.

I find them interesting because they're complicated.

Someone can be kind and hurt someone.

Someone can love another person and still fail them.

Someone can develop behaviors that once protected them and later discover those same behaviors are hurting them.

Someone can survive an incredibly difficult season and still struggle when everything is supposedly “fine.”

And sometimes healing doesn't look like returning to whoever you were before something happened.

Sometimes it means meeting whoever you've become and deciding where to go from there.

Those ideas inevitably find their way into my fiction.

Not because I'm trying to disguise psychology lessons as novels. Please stage an intervention if I ever start doing that.

I just think some of the most interesting stories begin when we stop asking whether a character is good or bad and start asking:

What happened to them?

I thank Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey for asking that question first.

And then there was Pinehaven.

Following the Stars wasn't born because I sat down one morning and decided I needed to launch a trilogy.

Actually, that probably would have been much more organized.

It grew from pieces.

An image.

A feeling.

A relationship.

A question.

Stars.

The idea that people can look at the same sky while standing in completely different places in their lives.

And characters who gradually became complicated enough that one book wasn't going to contain everything I wanted to know about them.

Pinehaven became the place where those people could exist.

If you've read Following the Stars, you already know that I'm interested in the space between the love stories we're taught to expect and the much messier relationships human beings actually have.

Lucy, especially, became important to me because her story allowed me to explore something I believe deeply: safety and happiness aren't always the same thing.

Sometimes the thing that feels familiar isn't the thing that's good for us.

Sometimes growing means questioning the story we thought we were supposed to live.

And sometimes the people who matter to us don't disappear simply because their role in our lives changes.

That's part of the reason Following the Stars became more than one story.

There was more sky left.

So... what is this blog?

Probably a little bit of everything.

I'll share book announcements here, obviously. Cover reveals. Release news. Events. Behind-the-scenes pieces from whatever I'm working on.

But I also want this to be where I can be a book nerd about my own books.

I want to talk about Pinehaven lore.

Characters.

Things you might have missed.

Songs that became attached to scenes in my head.

Places and images that inspired settings.

Why I made certain choices.

Things that never made it onto the page.

And eventually, glimpses into stories that exist beyond Pinehaven.

There will probably also be occasional thoughts about storytelling, psychology, humanity, creativity, and whatever rabbit hole I've fallen into lately.

I'm still figuring a lot of this out.

I'm figuring out publishing.

I'm figuring out what kind of author I want to become.

I'm pursuing an entirely separate career centered around understanding and helping people.

I'm learning things, changing my mind about things, and collecting entirely too many books along the way.

But I know what I want both careers to have in common.

I want people to feel seen.

If I someday sit across from someone as a therapist, I want them to feel like their story matters.

And when someone closes one of my novels, I want them to feel something similar.

Maybe they recognized themselves in somebody.

Maybe a character gave language to something they'd never known how to explain.

Maybe they cried.

Maybe they laughed.

Maybe they wanted to throw the book across the room for a minute. That's allowed, too.

But mostly, I hope something stays with them.

Because that's what stories have always done for me.

And apparently, somewhere along the way, I decided to start leaving some of my own behind.

Thanks for being here.

— Haley