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It's hard to claim you don't write climate fiction when your book is called When the Trees All Burned.

And yet, sitting on a panel at Canada Fiction Fest alongside cli-fi authors Margaret Sweatman, Jason Pchajek, and K.A. Wiggins (moderated by author Steve Hugh Westernra) I found myself realizing that there's a difference between writing into a genre and knowing it from the inside out.

When the Trees All Burned deals in the chosen — the two hundred algorithmically selected to outlast the end of the world. But the edges of that story are crowded with people who weren't picked, weren't warned, weren't saved. People who watched the sky change colour over their morning coffee and didn't know what they were seeing until it was too late.

When Miracles Come of Fire belongs to two of those people.

A popular social media influencer (+1M on TikTok) just released a book. It’s been highly anticipated (in her targeted community), highly rated (over 1600 Amazon reviews with 4.4 star average), and widely shared.

Last night, I sat beside the fireplace in the Carnegie Hall at the Owen Sound Library where I delivered the promised exclusive cover reveal of When The Trees All Burned to a crowded room of… two.

Participating in free programming through a public library certainly has its pros and cons.

Consider this my public penance: a detailed account of how I got taken in by a drifter event host, what I missed, and what I wish I’d done before I ever hit “pay.”

Wasn’t it just yesterday that I was announcing the launch of this project? I don’t understand time. It feels like a blink, but it also feels like this story has always been a part of me.

…And by bar I mean a clean and quiet hotel room (incidently, the murder room on the top floor) where the only sound is the crunch of low sodium sweet potato crackers.

What happens when an author confidently promises to finish Book 2 in three months—and takes a year instead? A brutally honest (and surprisingly funny) confession about writer's block, the tyranny of self-imposed deadlines, and why The Path That Takes Us Home series expanded from three books to four.

When I released When The Trees All Burned, I decided to enroll it in Kindle Unlimited as a business experiment. I thought if I could test the waters there it would leave me better equipped to advise the authors I support without putting any of their work “at risk.”

I accidentally promoted AI-generated music on Instagram. Here's why I took down a post with good engagement and what it taught me about integrity in creative spaces.

You know that feeling when something is right on the tip of your tongue, or just out of reach in your brain, and even though you know you know it, you can’t quite grab hold of it? That’s where we found ourselves. We knew we knew, but we didn’t know what we knew.

After spending years crafting When The Trees All Burned, I can’t shake the feeling that the man who gave us decades of anthems about hope, survival, and sticking together would absolutely devour this story. Here’s why:

My book launch for When the Trees All Burned at my local art gallery turned out to be everything I’d hoped for—and quite the opposite of my 5 a.m. anxiety spiral where I imagined speaking to an empty room. Instead, we had a standing-room-only crowd gathered in a space where apocalyptic fiction beautifully intersected with the gallery’s “Margins & Peripheries” exhibition.

When The Trees All Burned launched into the world on April 1, not as a joke I was playing on all the fools out there, but as a cautionary tale—reminding people that we are called to be stewards of our planet and that there might be some wisdom in heeding the warnings of those who are experts in such areas.

Unpacking the series theme song by Pocket Rochelle, “The Path That Takes Us Home.”

Guess who just landed the coolest sponsorship for my book launch? STAY SOCIAL WATER! And honestly, the connection between my apocalyptic novel and this sparkly can of hydration makes more sense than I initially thought.

The truth is, domes have been a staple in pop culture since... well, forever. They’re these perfect little metaphors for isolation, protection, control, and salvation all wrapped up in one convenient transparent package. Like a literary snow globe, except we writers get to decide the weather inside, the inhabitants, and whether anyone gets to leave alive.

I remember being 13, perched beside my parent’s boombox with a blank cassette in the deck, finger hovering over the record button, waiting for the opening notes of Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World” to play on the radio. The moment I heard those distinctive opening drums, I’d press down, sometimes catching the DJ’s voice trailing off, sometimes missing the first few seconds—an imperfect capture of a perfect song. No matter how many times I tried, I never got it quite right—but that never stopped me from enjoying each attempt.

It's strange how sometimes, art connects in ways we never anticipated. While writing When the Trees All Burned, I had a soundtrack that helped shape the atmosphere—songs that carried the weight of ending and beginning, of destruction and possibility. But then, I found myself drawn to an unexpected addition: “Corner of the Universe” by Creed Bratton.

Yes, that Creed Bratton from The Office. Before he was quality assurance at Dunder Mifflin, he was a legitimate musician with The Grass Roots in the '60s. His solo work has this playful quality that, surprisingly, resonates with the themes I explore in my novel.