The Village

I drove to Ohio City last weekend for a signing at Parallel Universe Books and realized somewhere on the way that I didn’t entirely know where I was going.

Not in the GPS sense, though that was running. In the larger sense. I moved to Northeast Ohio two and a half years ago and I am still, genuinely, learning where things are. Learning which neighborhoods feel like what. Learning which roads connect to which, and which exits lead somewhere worth exploring.

…and it occurred to me, somewhere on that drive, that every book signing I do is also a geography lesson.

Shaker Heights for Loganberry. Ohio City for Parallel Universe. Medina for Black Cat. Parma for Walls of Books. Each one a new corner of a place I am still in the process of becoming from.

I didn’t plan for The Triquetra Chronicles to be the thing that showed me my new hometown, but here we are.

What the corporate playbook doesn’t cover

I have spent most of my professional life helping organizations tell their stories. Building strategies, clarifying messages, creating the kind of marketing infrastructure that moves people from awareness to action. I know how that works. I’m good at it.

Being an indie author is nothing like that.

Not because the principles don’t apply; they do. But because the execution requires something the corporate playbook doesn’t fully account for: showing up in person, in a new city, in spaces you’ve never been, as yourself. Not as a brand representative or a strategist or a fractional executive. As the person who wrote the book.

That vulnerability is something I am still getting used to. And something I am, slowly, beginning to love.

Because what it keeps producing…the showing up, the driving to new neighborhoods, the setting up the table and talking to strangers about past lives and dual timelines and the woman who lights a candle and isn’t sure why, is community.

The Village

It takes a villge to get an indie author out there. I mean that in the most literal possible way.

The independent bookstores who said yes. The metaphysical shops who understood immediately what the series was for. The vendors who contributed to a giveaway, not because it was a transaction, but because they believed in what I was building. The readers who left reviews, who tagged friends, who carried the books to their book clubs and passed them to people they love.

None of this happens without them. Not a single event, not a single sale, not a single new reader finding their way to the series.

I have been thinking a lot lately about gratitude - real gratitude, not the performative kind. The kind that comes from understanding how many people have to say yes, and show up, and give something of themselves, for a thing like this to work.

The village is real, and, I am grateful for every person in it.

Through all of it; the new neighborhoods, the table setups, the conversations with strangers who become readers, my daughter has been there. Watching. Taking it all in the way she does.

I hope she is learning something from it. Not just about books or marketing or how to set up a signing table. About what it looks like to show up for something you believe in before the world has confirmed you should. About the village it takes to build a dream. About the people who say yes, and what that yes makes possible.

She is the best reason I have to keep going…and the best witness I could ask for.

Falls Hollow Fest

This Saturday I’ll be at Falls Hollow Fest in Medina, hosted by Black Cat Books. An evening event, 4-9PM, Author Alley, the kind of atmosphere that feels like exactly where The Triquetra Chronicles belongs.

Come find me if you’re there. Whether you are or are not, the Triquetra Chronicles Reading Experience giveaway is still open through August 15, with over $400 in curated goods from an incredible village of contributors. Head to my pinned post on Instagram to enter.

The series keeps showing me new things. New places. New people. New corners of a city I am still learning to call mine.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.