As soon as I understood what it meant to write your own lyrics, I bragged about Taylor Swift’s songwriting abilities to anyone who would listen. “Did you know Taylor Swift wrote that song all by herself? Not many people do that nowadays.” I was seven and smugly parroting a YouTube comment, but the urge to be one of few people who wrote for themselves was strong. I first rewrote Swift’s songs in my own words, thinking I was clever, while really just making them into unintelligible messes. When I finally felt skilled enough to tackle an original song, it was something completely novel: I rhymed “you” with “blue.” (Five times in a row…. Truly groundbreaking material!) But the more I learned about Swift — she won a poetry contest in fourth grade! She says she wrote a book one summer! — the more I wanted to emulate her, the more I wrote and wrote and wrote. Journals filled with attempts at depth and profundity overflow from my desk, and though I now look back on those pages with cringing hindsight, I think about how they wouldn’t exist at all without Taylor Swift.​

Read about Create in the Crest here.

Thank you everyone for coming out to support me and local original music!

A few weeks ago, I had the good fortune of being able to "meet" Elsie Callender of Tea and Ink Society. We discussed our mutual love of literature. Check out our conversation over on her blog! Thank you to Elsie for our conversation and for her blog feature!

Enjoy these photos from my performance at End of the Road Theater on November 6, 2021. Thank you to all who came out to support me and my music. You made my night! Thank you, Stevi and John Paul for capturing my event. Thank you especially to Jen Swain for giving me the opportunity to play at End of the Road Theater. "All Too Well" by Taylor Swift featured because as I said, "Who would I be if I didn't play a Taylor Swift song?"

I'd like to thank award-winning author, Jan Sikes for supporting me as a singer/songwriter and indie music artist. I contacted Jan through her blog about a month ago and she was instantly interested in my concept EP, "make it be me." She is helping to spread the word about my literary-inspired music in her Writing and Music blog. I'd love for you to head on over to check out her blog and read all about my music and its inspiration. There's a giveaway included for two lucky winners; if you leave a comment and share her blog post on social media, you can qualify for the prizes too! Two winners will receive a t-shirt, cd, bookmark, pin, and sticker. Thank you to Jan, her readers, and to all who have shown me such amazing support over the past few months!

This song is written from Billy Pilgrim’s (Slaughterhouse Five) point of view. He is such an interesting character and because I agreed with many of his ideas this was a fun song for me to write. However, there are parts of this song that are purely Billy. 

 Little Women is a piece of literature that has had a profound effect on me for years; the release of the 2019 film only heightened my love for it and thus propelled me to write a literary analysis of Alcott's 1868 novel. It's strange that I haven't written a song about it yet, but I guess that my creativity was channeled into a much different sort of writing. Please enjoy "Relationships in Little Women," an essay in which I fervently defend the end game relationships of both Jo and Amy. This is the final part of a four part series.

​For a recap, please read part 1, part 2, and part 3.