January 23, 2026
Listening to: Bell Bottom Blues ♫
Dear you, it’s been a while...
I been thinking about you, how you’ve been doing, what you’ve been reading, if life’s been good to you. Most of all, through the last twelve months of writing, I’ve been thinking about the moment you decide to open Call Me Baby.
You probably heard of its release. My sixth full-length book, can you believe it? Just like all my other releases, this one was no less scary.
But experience has taught me that a story emerges when it’s ready, not when it’s convenient or safe. Still, over the years, I’ve found myself in constant wonder as to why certain ones demand to be told. As if choice is stripped away, and there’s a greater reason for it all. Something that might not make sense now, and maybe never will. At least not for me. That's what it felt like writing Call Me Baby. It’s not a story I ever planned or wanted to share, but it didn’t give a fuck.
It’s true, I was writing Ghost of Nova Graves, but that Gothic gut-wrench required parts of me that hadn’t fully healed from Bone Island. Compound that with the wars happening around the world, the U.S. just ending an emotional election, an uproar in the book community, social media in constant chaos, and I found myself falling back into the dreadful trenches no writer wants to be in.
‘Writer's block’ has taken on a negative connotation, often dismissed as a lazy excuse rather than a creative paralysis. So we'll call it what it feels like: numbness.
I knew if I continued pushing through Nova Graves, it wouldn't be at its best. So I dug up one of my side manuscripts (one I started back in 2022) to... take a break, breathe, combat the creative war going on in my head, figuring I'd find that part of me that could give Nova Graves what it deserved. Instead, Call Me Baby grabbed my hands and never let go.
The last night of January of 2025, I told my husband that I was side-lining Nova & taking a break from social media—a place I’m sensitive to, a place that takes more out of me than I can give back, and a place that always leaves me depleted rather than connected. And on February 1st, I hit the gas and let Allison & Andrew take the wheel.
I was addicted, captivated, spending close to 16 hours a day, every day, with Allison & her story. As obsessive as it sounds, I wish it were a lie, because it’s embarrassing, but it’s true. So true, that my doctor prescribed sunlight due to my atrocious vitamin D levels. Though, I only know one way to write, and that is with a toxic mess of madness. Any less, I fear I’m forcing a story instead of following it. And the most exciting of it all? No one knew what I was up to. No one was waiting on Allison & Andrew. There was no pressure, no pestering, only the excavation of a story that reminded me what it felt like to escape without expectations.
I didn't write with armor, shields, or defenses. I didn’t polish words for promo. I didn't write for it to be something safe or likable or hell, even marketable. I didn't dull these characters for comfort. I just wrote and wrote—this story that refused to be forsaken—and it filled me up until I was full of everything.
Though, as with every story, Call Me Baby brought its challenges.
Between you and me? There were many, many nights I sat in front of my keyboard crying. This story didn’t give me permission to write in ways I was used to. It required new bones, new lungs, a different pulse, a new soul shaped from writing chapters over and over because nothing was making sense—until I realized the only thing wrong was the rules I kept trying to follow. So I started breaking them.
Letting go of my natural prose, my voice, to allow Allison tell her story in hers, in the way she demanded, was the bravest sacrifice I made for Call Me Baby. It wasn’t easy. But in truth, there was only ever going to be one way for this story to be told, a way that was inevitable, and that was through the character.
Some stories can’t breathe when you keep them caged, or run if you keep them chained. Trust me, I tried.
One way to cope was by giving this voice a name—Cigarette Prose. A style that mirrors her songwriting soul, her honesty, her emotions, her heartbeat. It's how she thinks, how she feels, and I didn't dare correct her or pave her voice smooth for anyone else. I just let it burn.
In the end, I wanted this story to find readers in the same way it consumed me. By inevitability. I wanted this story to be read without expectation, pressure, or obligation—the same way I wrote it. I wanted this story to be experienced in the way I experienced it: surprisingly. And I wanted this story to feel like a gift, not a campaign, because that's what it was for me, healing in more ways than one.
Art should interrupt life. This is why I made the decision not to do prior marketing, ARCs, or pre-orders.
This year will be my seventh year in publishing, and I've come to believe in not feeding into modern day hype culture and allowing readers to remember what it feels like to discover a book by chance, to experience a story in the way it was meant to, to give readers permission to decide for themselves how to feel without pressure. To hold a book in their hands and think: this book found me, this was written for me, this is exactly what I needed right now.
Call Me Baby is a lot of things, but at the core lives a man who suffers from fawn behavior, using performance as a mask to protect himself, and a girl who has reinvented herself to ensure no one could ever use her again.
You don't owe this book anything, and it's not for everyone. But if it finds you, it's my hope that Allison's strength lingers in you, that Andrew's heart haunts you, and that their resilience stays with you long after the last song and through the next.
And if it made you feel anything at all,
that's already more than enough.
