Writing Women's Second Acts

After twenty years in hospice social work, I learned that the bravest stories aren't about falling in love. They're about a woman, alone at her kitchen table at 6 AM, deciding that today is the day she stops apologizing for the life she's actually living.

The Apology Tour

After the Apology Tour is set in Maine, in the kind of coastal town that gets quieter every year, where houses outlast marriages and women learn to sit with grief like an old friend who visits without announcement.

My protagonist has spent forty years apologizing. For her divorce. For her ambitions. For not wanting what she was supposed to want. For taking up space. The "apology tour" is when she stops running and decides to actually hear what people think of her—and then to decide if she cares.

Women's Fiction Isn't Romance

This is important: women's fiction isn't a consolation prize for women who didn't get a romance. It's the story of what comes after. It's the story of building a life around your own wants, not around someone else's needs.

In this book, my character finds friendship that saves her. She finds work that matters. She learns that the life she can build alone is more solid than any compromise she's ever accepted.

Why Maine Matters

I live between Maine and Portland, and Maine is where you go to think. It's where the ocean doesn't comfort you—it just reminds you that you're small. In a good way. It shrinks your regrets and amplifies your choices.

The setting becomes a character: the cold water, the old houses, the long winters, the way summer tourists come and go and the town stays put.

This Book Is For You If

You've ever wondered what life looks like on the other side of resentment. You've ever bought new sheets and meant it. You've ever sat on a porch in the dark and felt relieved to be alone. You've ever realized that the life you didn't plan was the only one worth living.