2025: The year I published an entire series—and rewrote my own story.

This isn’t advice—just my story.

I didn’t mean to publish a seven-book series in one year.
It wasn’t a plan.
It wasn’t a strategy.
It just… happened.

I always wanted to write a book.

Stories lived in my mind for as long as I can remember—worlds made of magic and love and danger, characters who felt more real than people I knew. When I was seventeen, I started collecting pieces of one of those worlds. Not a manuscript. Just fragments. Images. Moments. Names that wouldn’t leave me alone.

But life isn’t always kind to dreamers.

And somewhere along the way, that part of me learned how to go quiet. To tuck itself away. To sleep.

Then, nineteen years later—on May 7th, 2024—seven months after a life-altering choice where I finally chose myself—that dreamer woke up.

Not gently.
Not slowly.

Ideas surfaced all at once, and then they poured.

I opened the Notes app on my phone and started dumping everything out—characters, storylines, magic systems, emotional arcs. It went on for weeks. Everywhere I went, the story followed. While driving. While shopping. While cleaning.

I wasn’t creating it so much as uncovering it, like it had been waiting patiently for me to be ready.

Fated, my first novel, was where I learned—in real time—how to write a book. Mistakes and all.

In the beginning, I revised it again and again, but I never truly rewrote it. Not from scratch. Not from a distance. I shaped it while still inside it—still becoming the writer I am now.

Even today, I can see the beginner choices I might make differently. A cleaner structure. A sharper rhythm. But I can’t bring myself to erase what’s already there.

Because that book holds something sacred.

It holds the moment I first learned how to listen to my characters. How to trust emotion over perfection. How to begin.

As my writing grew, the story grew. And I grew with it. The writing became part of the story.

But believing in the story didn’t mean the world would, too.

I queried seventy-five agents.
Every single one said no.

And honestly? I don’t blame them when I look back at that original manuscript.

But even then, I knew one thing with absolute certainty:

This story needed to exist.

So I kept going.

I chose self-publishing—not as a backup plan, but as a promise to myself. A promise that I wouldn’t abandon the story just because I was still learning how to tell it.

That choice didn’t make things easier.

There were long nights staring at drafts, convinced it would never be good enough. Days where I questioned whether anyone would ever care—whether all that time, all that heart, was being poured into silence.

There were moments I wanted to give up—not because I didn’t love the story, but because I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to carry it.

And still…

I kept going.

Writing stopped being something I made time for
and became something I had to do.

It wasn’t just need—
it was the quiet thrill of wanting to be back inside the story,
every spare moment tugging me home.

Scenes wouldn’t let go.
Mornings began mid-sentence.
Days were shaped around getting the words out before they disappeared.

Fated took the longest to write. By February 2025, I was finally ready to publish—and Awakened was already nearly finished. But the version of Fated I released then looked very different from the version that exists today.

Because in the months leading up to—and even after—publication, I didn’t just write a book.

I studied writing.
Storytelling.
Structure.
Emotion.
Pacing.
Voice.

I consumed everything I could—not because I wanted perfection, but because I had a story I wanted to honor. I wanted to tell it well.

After Fated released, I went back into it again.

And again.
And again.

Nights of revision. Hours hunched over Word documents, reshaping sentences, reworking scenes, applying techniques I was still learning.

Somewhere in that process, I fell in love with a breath-based style of writing—letting emotion dictate rhythm, allowing white space and pauses to carry as much meaning as the words themselves.

By the third revision of Awakened, I was dreaming in Word docs. Narrating my life in my head. Completely consumed.

But there was joy in it, too—the kind that makes time slip sideways when scenes click and the world narrows to words and breath.

And I wasn’t driven by productivity or deadlines. I was driven by the need to finish telling a story that arrived when I was finally ready to carry it.

And then—after the book was out in the world—the rejection took a different shape.

There were reviews—some fair, some not—that I read at two in the morning with tears in my eyes, wondering if maybe they were right.

But the story didn’t stop.

I kept writing through the doubt.
Through the noise.
Through the learning curve that came with putting a book into the world on my own.

Then came everything else—the logistics of self-publishing, marketing, formatting, learning an entirely new industry—all while still drafting the next book.

Restored came in April.
Reckoning followed in July.

And with every book, a part of me healed.

Fated dives into themes that lived close to my heart—feeling unworthy, forgiveness, hope after loss, redemption. Writing those stories wasn’t just creative work; it was personal. Each book closed a chapter inside me, even as it opened one for the characters.

By the time I published Reckoning, something shifted.

I stopped rewriting endlessly.
I trusted my voice.
I understood my style.
I felt confident.

July was when I finally let go—when I stopped holding the books so close, stopped trying to perfect them in private, and decided I was ready to let them exist in the world as they were.

And that’s when things started to change.

I began building a review team.
Running promotions.
Gathering readers.

And then one day, I opened an app and saw someone reviewing my book—talking about how it made them cry, and laugh, and feel.

I was at a circus with my family that day. During intermission, I ran to the car—and on the way, I opened TikTok.

Someone was raving about Fated for three full minutes.

I stood behind a circus tent and cried.

I wasn’t a bestseller.
I was just an indie author.

But people were talking about my story—asking questions, sharing theories.

And in that moment, I realized something quietly, profoundly true:

I was already living my dream.

That was the dream.
Not rankings or titles—but connection.

I cry a lot now.

I cry while writing emotional scenes.
I cry reading reviews.
I cry when a reader tells me something resonated—when a milestone I never allowed myself to imagine quietly appears on my screen.

Those tears don’t come from doubt.

They come from gratitude.

From realizing that the thing I once questioned—my voice, my instincts, my ability to carry a story all the way through—was never missing. I just hadn’t learned yet how to trust it.

In the following months, I finally started showing up for my story. And the numbers followed. Royalties multiplied. Pages stacked.

I watched it unfold with stunned, quiet awe.

Fourfold.
Then six.
Doubling.
Quadrupling.

Unveiled came in September, and I couldn’t wait to reach it.
Calyx and Reize’s story had lived inside me since Awakened—
and writing their book felt like finally exhaling.
It holds a special place in my heart.

I thought the series was almost finished.

Unveiled was nearly complete. I had a spin-off planned.
But before I ever wrote the final words, I realized I still wanted something more—
a book where we could see the characters after the war.
After the fight.
Happy. At peace.

That became Unbound.
A gift—for the readers, for me, for the characters.
And the perfect bridge into Fated Legacies. Once again, I thought the Fated series was finished.

Until one day in October, when I caught myself wishing I had a holiday novella.

The next day, I was writing.

Fifteen days later, A Fated Christmas existed.

Then things got busy.

October and November were filled with promotions, launches, logistics. And I’ve learned that the writing part of me and the marketing part of me don’t always coexist easily.

After releasing A Fated Christmas, all I wanted was to dive straight into Legacies.

But Legacies is different.

A new beginning.

And just like Fated once did, it needed space to breathe before it could speak.

So I slowed down. I spent a month taking notes. Learning the characters. Developing the world. Letting the story live in my mind before asking it to take shape on the page.

And now—it’s ready to take shape.

Four chapters are written, and I’m already in love with them.

December has been full. There were detours and roadblocks I didn’t expect, so I gave myself permission to rest through the holidays. To breathe.

And in January, I’ll dive fully back into Legacies.

Looking back over 2025, I stand in a different kind of awe.

Because this is what I know now:

Writing Fated has been the best thing I’ve ever done.

There were no guarantees.
No permission slips.
No moment where someone told me this would work.

I just kept choosing the story.

Choosing to believe it mattered.
Choosing to believe I mattered enough to finish it.

Even when I was still learning.
Even when the answers were no.
Even when the path wasn’t clear.

That quiet belief—the one that says keep going anyway—changed everything.

Fated was written in a season where I needed hope. Healing. Love. It carried forgiveness and redemption, and the quiet belief that broken things could still be worthy.

Legacies echoes something different.

Adventure.
Curiosity.
Boldness.

It’s the story of stepping forward instead of holding back. Of asking questions instead of choosing safety. Of inhabiting a character like Riven—sure of herself, reckless in the best way, unafraid to reach for more.

Writing it feels like meeting myself where I am now, instead of where I once needed to be.

Fated is finished—but it isn’t an ending.

It’s momentum.

Seven books.
One year.
A story I almost never told.

And somehow…

I did.

If you’re holding a story close, wondering if it matters, I hope this is proof that it does. That you do. That it’s not too late to begin.

To every single person who picked up Fated—whether you read one page or all seven books—thank you.

You didn’t just read a story.
You believed in it with me.