About

I spent over a decade teaching world history — AP World History, Humanities, the kind of classes where you spend a lot of time explaining to teenagers why the fall of the Roman Republic actually matters. I loved it. In 2018, Humanities Texas named me their Outstanding Teacher of the Year, which I mention not to brag but because it explains a lot about why this book exists.

I was also, quietly, someone who had never written fiction and wasn't entirely sure I could.

Then in October 2023, I stood in the Roman Forum, and a tour guide pointed at the ruins and said: here is where the Vestal Virgins lived. In that moment I saw one character: who she was, what had been done to her, what it would cost her. I didn't know yet that pulling that thread would unravel into three books.

The Emperor's Shadow, the first book in the Empire of the Shattered Heavens Trilogy, releases October 12, 2026. Books Two and Three are already written and deep in the editing phase. I'm still not entirely sure how that happened.

I live in Austin, Texas. I write dark things and then go to HEB. The contrast feels about right.

If you want to follow the process: the world-building, the publishing, the ongoing experience of doing something terrifying for the first time, please join my newsletter below. The first thing you'll get is a deleted scene from the book.

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