Notes from the Field: A Guide to My Weird Adventures

Fantasy worlds don’t arrive fully formed. Black Hollow didn’t either. It started the way a lot of childhoods do: with builder toys, mismatched action figures, and a brain that wouldn’t stop fizzing, snapping strange little pieces together until they felt like home. But it was also born in hospital rooms, oxygen tents, and long stretches of bedrest, back when my lungs decided breathing was optional and my world got very small. When you’re stuck like that, your imagination either saves you or eats you, so I built a place to live: a strange, safe place with a long memory, a few secrets, and room for kids who don’t fit neatly anywhere else. It wasn't even a school back then. Just a pretty valley with the Cruel Teeth and a mountain I just called the big peak.

Here Lies Proof That Books can be Shelter.

By seventh grade, I’d fallen hard for parchment-and-fog adventures and oddball companions, and I never really came back.

Black Hollow is where my kid-self kept living, long before magical schools became a genre, in a story where being unusual wasn’t a flaw to fix. It was simply true. In my version, the “curse” was antlers, showing up at the worst possible moments, like when I was emotional, exhausted, or trying too hard to hold it together.

Years later, I realized this world didn’t have to stay locked in my head. I could share it with other kids who need somewhere to go when life gets heavy, and with the librarians, teachers, and parents who are always quietly looking for the right story to put in the right hands.

So, I wrote the book I wanted. And the book I wanted was one that librarians hand to a child and say, “I think this one might be for you.”

Just like a sweet librarian with curly gray hair and cat-eye bifocals did for me once.