This Wasn’t Supposed to Happen

A few weeks ago, I posted a short video talking about how I became a writer.

This is the longer version.

When I was a kid, I loved to write. Not journals or diaries those always felt too close to reality and my reality was pretty boring and miserable. I wanted something bigger than that. I wrote screenplays. Or at least, what I thought screenplays were at that age. I had this idea that one day I’d write something cinematic. Something that mattered. Something that could sit on a shelf next to the greats like Citizen Kane, Sunset Boulevard, and On the Waterfront.

I also wrote short stories. And a truly impressive amount of terrible poetry.

But I didn’t grow up in a house where that kind of thing was encouraged.

My dad worked constantly. When he was home, he was either resting or out in the garage. I don’t fault him for that. He did what he had to do.

My mom was focused somewhere else entirely, on my older brother.

To be fair, my brother is a genius. The kind of person who reads something once and just…knows it. Retains it. Masters it. I was never that. I had to work for things. Study. Repeat. Try again.

And somewhere along the way, a narrative formed.

He could be anything.

I was…practical.

“Street smart,” my mom used to say. The kind of person who “knows to bring an umbrella when it looks like rain”.

(Which is ironic, because I’m not entirely sure I own an umbrella now.)

When it came time to think about the future, I tried to choose something for myself. I found a creative writing program at a university in Minnesota and brought it to my mom.

That conversation ended quickly.

We didn’t have the money, she said. And even if we did, writing wasn’t a realistic path for me. I wasn’t likely to succeed at it.

And that was that.

To be honest, I didn’t fight very hard. By then, I believed it too.

So just before I turned eighteen, my path was set. I enlisted in the United States Air Force and shipped off to Basic Military Training in Texas.

What followed was more than twenty years in uniform. Ten assignments. Multiple deployments. A lifetime, really.

Did I write during that time?

Yes. Technically.

Performance reports. Letters of reprimand. PowerPoint presentations about things that felt important at the time and don’t matter at all now.

Not exactly page-turners.

When I finally retired, almost five years ago, I didn’t set out to become a novelist. That wasn’t the plan.

The plan was simple: get a job that didn’t involve the military and, eventually, maybe run for office. I’d developed a real interest in government and policy over the years…something I still care deeply about.

While working at Health and Human Services, I started a small blog. Just writing out my thoughts on policy, national security, education…things I’d spent years thinking about but could never say out loud due to my service.

That blog changed everything.

An old friend from my military days saw it. She was running an online news agency at the time, and she brought me on as a political commentator.

And for the first time in a long time, writing felt…electric again.

I wrote about economics, national security, science. I did radio. Podcasts. Interviews. I found an audience.

At one point, my editor suggested I write a book about my experiences in Afghanistan. He thought it would do well..you know…female veteran, Bronze Star, unique perspective.

So I tried.

But the book didn’t want to be what he thought it should be. It turned into something else entirely…more of a critique of leadership in the military than a memoir.

And the truth was, I wasn’t excited about it.

That chapter of my life mattered. It shaped me. But it wasn’t the story I wanted to tell anymore.

I didn’t want to be defined by it.

So I set it aside.

And instead, I started paying attention to something I’d been carrying around for years…ideas. Fragments of stories. Characters that wouldn’t quite leave me alone.

Eventually, one of them came into focus.

Max West.

A paranormal investigator in Las Vegas. A man shaped by loss, by questions that never got answered, by a world that doesn’t quite behave the way it’s supposed to.

And just like that I was writing fiction again.

Not because it was practical.

But because I couldn’t not do it.

Now here I am.

Forty-three years old. The kid who was told she probably wouldn’t succeed as a writer.

And in August, my debut novel No Rest for the Wicked will be published.

By a real publisher.

The long way around, I guess.

But maybe that’s the point.

Some stories don’t start when they’re supposed to.

Some of them take years. Decades, even. They get buried under responsibility, expectation, and the things we’re told we’re “good at.”

But they don’t go away.

They wait.

And if you’re lucky…if you’re stubborn enough, or curious enough, or just tired of ignoring them and tired of people telling you what you can’t do…you find your way back.

Even if it wasn’t supposed to happen.