My friend Kathy and I have known each other since junior high. At one time we waged a cartoon war that involved adventures of our awkward superhero alter egos. I was dubbed Super Frizz because my grandmother had attempted to perm my hair in the seventh grade and severely damaged it. It took years to grow out.
Circa 2009-2010, Kathy and I had a series of meetings at our local Wendy’s to catch up and discuss creative adventures. Just thinking about it makes me want a bacon and cheese baked potato – my go-to at Wendy’s at the time. We called the meetings “The Wendy’s Experiment” and dreamed up lots of possibilities.
(Kathy, if you’re reading this, please correct me if I’m wrong about anything – this seems like a whole life ago to me).
The Birth of Hope & Josie Go to the Prom
I have had several friends over the years that I tried to create with, but it is no simple thing for more than one person to have the time or energy or resources to bring ideas into form.
However, on this particular occasion, all the things aligned to create something really fun.
Hope & Josie Go to the Prom was written in a back and forth manner between Kathy and me as the characters Hope and Josie. We treated the creation almost as if we were uncovering the story ourselves as we wrote our notes to each other and the exchanges grew in complexity and silliness.
At the time we wrote it (again, 2009-10), we felt like we made use of the communication options that teens had available. While most of those don’t really translate to what a 2025 teen would use, the story still holds up. It is super zany and wild, and if you read it with the knowledge of when it was written, it hits some nostalgia buttons.
Then and Now
I decided to bring it back into the world earlier this year. When we first published it on Lulu.com in 2010, we had it printed as a spiralized book because we thought that would be a cute feature. It actually made the printing cost a little ridiculous. Later, we didn’t publish it as an ebook because we didn’t want to lose the handwritten fonts that we felt made the book seem like you were truly reading someone’s notes.
I finally decided to tackle that issue. I knew I could publish Hope & Josie as an illustrated ebook, but I needed to do it in a way that people wouldn’t have to enlarge each page to read it (because that would be super annoying).
I tested several different sizes and I think I found a sweet spot where the reader has a decent amount of text per page without having to zoom in.
Is There a Sequel?
When we first created Hope & Josie Go to the Prom, Kathy and I thought we would be making a series of books with these two characters. That hasn’t quite panned out over the last fifteen years.
I’m pretty excited about that and a bit nervous. I imagine this feeling is similar to seeing your child up on stage, about to perform their part in the school play and, while you’ve done what you can to prepare them, you don’t know 100% how it is going to go. I’m proud of the book regardless of how well it does. But, of course, I want it to do well and for folks to enjoy it!
So… Where Did the Idea Come From?
I wanted to use today’s post to reveal the origin of Goddess Game. For most of my stories, the origins are memorable and I could tell you exactly when I had the idea and what it was spawned from. This one was not so easy for me to pin down.
I have a folder for Goddess Gamewhere I have consolidated various beginnings and writing explorations about the story. I went into that folder, trying to jog my memory. I was surprised to see that I had a NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) file from 2012 where I had started to write this story. It was quite different at that time. Bethany was called Denise. She was a data analyst, and, while there was a similar grocery store scene at the beginning, she and the love interest ended up working together at the same company.
I also found a NaNoWriMo file where I made another attempt to write it in 2017. In both these years, I did not get very far with it. The idea endured, though, and when I was looking at my half-finished writing projects and making a plan to complete them, this one stood out as a fun story to put higher up on the “to do” list.
Tracing the Creative Thread
Because I had the NaNoWriMo file from 2012, I decided to go back to my 2012 morning pages and see if I could zero in on where this idea originated. I didn’t really find the exact answer there (and ended up in a rabbit hole of old writings!), but it did stir up some memories about it.
Around 2011 or 2012, I had been attempting to co-write a book with a friend of mine. One of the ideas that I offered up was a character that realized she could write her own life. I know, I know – that’s not a particularly novel idea. At the time, I thought it was. However, we didn’t end up writing a book together, and this “character writing her own life” idea started to grow into a story in my psyche.
I started to imagine an arrogant goddess, thinking she could be born into human form and easily see through the distractions of life and master it. She imagines that she would craft and experience a perfect love story. Except, she falls victim to the same pitfalls we all do and ends up living a mundane life.
Later, that concept became a bit more nuanced. The idea of the arrogant goddess faded away and it became a story of Bethany. She has a supernatural gift that she has used to stay safe, not realizing that safety has kept her from all the joy she dreamed of experiencing in life.
What Goddess Game Is Really About
The underlining message is that we are all creators of our own life. We just have to be willing to do the (sometimes uncomfortable) work that activates our inner power.
Writing Bethany’s story certainly caused me to look at areas in my life that I am holding myself back. These days I am clearer about my goals and what I need to do to reach them and even move beyond them into bigger goals. As Brian Johnson points out in his book Arete, we can nudge ourselves infinitely forward by asking and acting on two questions:
What do I want?
Now what do I need to do?
I want to write more books and reach more people to read and enjoy them!
I’ve had a deep fascination with the supernatural and paranormal since childhood. A good ghost story? Always my jam. And over the years, I’ve had a few strange experiences of my own.
One of those real-life encounters inspired my short story Darker than the Night—first published in the July 2007 issue of The School Magazine. It was the opening story for that edition, and the cover art was even inspired by it.
But the story itself? That was sparked one night by a trip to a haunted church.
How It Started
I was in in college. Two friends (a guy we’ll call J and a girl we’ll call V) invited me to go to the beach to visit a “haunted” church. Too much time has passed for me to accurately recall the story about the church. I seem to remember that someone had burned the church down twice and possibly that one or more persons had died in the fire – I can’t be sure about those details, though. What I can be sure of is what happened when we went there.
To get to the church, we drove down a long road that didn’t have much else on it. This gave me a sense of being out in the middle of nowhere when we pulled alongside the road and parked. The church had a fence around it and we had to walk around to a place where the chain links had been pulled away from the posts and we could crawl through.
I was apprehensive about the whole thing. I never liked doing things that could get me in trouble and trespassing on the church property made me very uncomfortable. I went along, though. I also knew that I wanted to have unusual experiences and I figured it would make a cool story.
The bell tower of the church was still standing, but without a bell. The openings on the bell tower were large and you could see the moonlight through it easily. Several walls were also intact. We walked around the remains of the church. V kept saying that she felt hands touching her. Not being able to verify this in any way, I was a bit skeptical.
As we walked about and talked, we came across what I can best describe as a shadow-wall. I’m not sure how to describe this adequately except that one of the broken pieces of wall extended out into a 3-dimensional wall-shaped shadow. It was as if the wall had a shadow extension. I walked around it, looking at it and the surroundings from different angles to determine what could be causing it. J put his hand in it. I felt that was not a good idea.
The Descent
About that time, V said that she could see some dark shape circling the bell tower. We hung around for a bit longer, talking about the shadow wall and what had happened at the church and why it might be haunted. Somewhat suddenly, V said that we needed to go.
The three of us hurried across the property and squeezed our way out through the fence. When we got to the car, V told us that the thing that was circling the tower was starting to crawl down. The thought of that freaked me out a bit. I was in the back seat of the car as we drove away and I remember looking back at the tower as we left.
The openings in the tower were impossibly dark based on the size of the openings and the moonlight that should have been shining through.
The experience left quite an impression. And if you’ve read the story, you know how this inspired it.
Want to Read the Story?
You can grab Darker than the Night as a free download when you join my newsletter. It’s a creepy little short for fans of weird fiction, ghost stories, and real-life chills.
I’ve had a lot of zombie dreams over the years. And yes, I’ve watched more than my fair share of zombie shows and movies—so I’m sure that’s partly to blame. For most of my adult life, anytime I walked into a new space, I’d instinctively scan for the best exit route in case of a sudden zombie invasion.
I can’t be the only one who does this, right?
A Dream That Became a Story
One particular dream stuck with me and eventually became the seed of my book The Resurrection Incident. At the time, I still called the creatures in my dream “zombies,” even though that label didn’t quite fit.
In the dream, I was on a spaceship, walking through dim hallways with a group of people. We all had a shared sense of urgency—something was coming. We didn’t know what, just that we had to hide. We found a mechanical room and ducked inside.
Then they appeared.
The Floating Undead (But Not Really)
They didn’t look like traditional zombies. They floated about a foot off the ground, their eyes glowing blood-red, bobbing eerily as they moved. When they entered the room, the people around me began to explode into parts—and then rise again as creatures like the ones who’d just entered.
I knew I was next. I could feel something stirring inside me, about to shift.
Then I had a moment of lucidity. I became aware that I was dreaming—and I realized I was in control. In that surreal moment, I could see my vast, energetic body stretched across space. It turned, slowly, like a cosmic being waking up. And then it opened its eyes…
I stood up in the dream and faced the creatures. I pulled the plug on whatever power was animating them—and they dropped to the ground in piles.
From “Space Zombies” to “Resurrects”
When I woke up, I remembered every detail. That dream became one of those stories I circled for years—freewrites, chapter starts, rewrites, new outlines. At one point, I called it Zelwa and the Space Zombies. Later, it became Jarem and the Space Zombies. But as the world deepened, I realized “zombie” didn’t quite fit.
They weren’t undead—they were something else. Something tied to energy, resurrection, and transformation. So I renamed them: resurrects.
I thought “The Resurrection Incident” might be a single novel, but I later had a few people ask me if there would be more and, what do you know, I had an idea for a sequel. I just have to clear out a few more books before I get to it. 😊
Ready to Explore The Resurrection Incident?
If you’re into:
Sci-fi with a spiritual/metaphysical twist
Floating red-eyed beings that may or may not be zombies
Dreams that rewrite the rules of reality
And characters who wake up to more than just danger…
At various times in my life, I’ve written them down—sometimes just to remember them, sometimes to try to understand them. A few were so vivid they’ve stayed with me like memories, even ones I had as a teenager (or younger). They shaped how I viewed myself and the world. I used to wonder what it meant to have the same dream over and over again. Why that image? That story?
When I got my driver’s license as a teen, one of the first things I was excited to do was drive myself to the public library. Up until then, I’d only had access to school libraries—but this was a new world.
I would leave with a backpack so stuffed with books, it bulged at the seams. I kind of miss those days.
Strange Shelves and Quiet Spark
In the little rural town I grew up in, there was one narrow aisle in the library with a small cluster of books on dream interpretation, reincarnation, ghosts, psychology, and religion. I devoured everything I could find.
That’s where I discovered the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson, Edgar Cayce, and likely Joseph Campbell. A memoir called Welcome, Silence—about one woman’s experience with schizophrenia—also made a deep impression on me.
All of that fueled my curiosity about things that can’t be easily explained. And, as you might expect, my writing took some unusual turns during that time (and let’s be honest—it still does).
A Psychic, a Folded Dollar, and “The Work”
In college, a friend of mine visited a psychic. I was intrigued. I knew the house—just off the highway I drove past every day to get to class. So I made an appointment.
Honestly? It was a bit underwhelming. It felt like the woman was just trying to upsell me. My friend had told me her reading, and strangely, I was told nearly the same thing—though I hadn’t mentioned anything in advance.
The woman gave me a folded dollar bill and said I’d either see that its face had changed and return, or I wouldn’t—and I’d never come back.
(Spoiler: I never went back.)
But she did say something that stuck with me.
She described using her intuition as “going into the work.”
That phrase sparked my imagination. I began picturing the universe as an enormous, steampunk-like energetic machine, and sleep as a way we plug into it—accidentally or intuitively. Maybe we all go into the work when we dream.
The poem below came out of that idea. I think I was 18 or 19 when I wrote it. It’s simple, but still resonates.
The Work (by Sheila Lee Brown circa 1996-7)
At night one goes unknowingly into the work – – eyes closed, breathing rhythmic. The body continues with minimal effort as the mind-spirit-soul merges more completely with the mechanics of consciousness. No self, yet all self. It moves – – Bolted in mortality, fueled by blood, edging towards something greater and surreal. Visions come that baffle the optic nerves and intimate God, the unliving present; and one awakes, calling it a dream.
One More Story (for Another Time)
Later in life, I visited a hypnotherapist and went through a past-life regression—which was a very different kind of experience.
But that’s a story for another post. 😊
Where Do Your Dreams Go?
Over the years, writing down my dreams has helped me track patterns, explore symbols, and spark story ideas I never would have uncovered otherwise.
If you’d like a space for your own dreamwork, I’ve created a Dream Journal that you can find in my shop. It’s simple, magical, and made for nights just like the ones we talked about above.
I was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). While I don’t consider myself an active Mormon today, I was baptized in the Darlington Ward and stayed there until around age 10 or 11, when that ward closed. From then on, my family attended the Hartsville Ward. I remained involved until I was 19.
Growing up LDS came with structure and values I appreciated. The emphasis on goodness, kindness, and service resonated with me. Compared to the often confusing and cruel behavior I witnessed outside the church, it felt like a sanctuary.
But then something shifted.
A Moment at Camp That Changed Everything
However, I had an experience in Young Women’s Church camp when I was 13 that shifted how I saw the church. It didn’t help that a lot of unpleasantness was happening to people I cared about in my personal and school life. It was a confusing time with many, many things to process for a young, expanding mind.
Anyway, that particular experience at camp always occurred to me as a pivotal point in my belief system. For a 13-year old just wanting to trust the world, I felt that I couldn’t – not even in a church environment. My sister was at camp with me and she and I often stewed over the injustice we felt.
From Anger to Insight
As most writers, I love using writing as a cathartic process. I have been circling this story for many years, giving it the tentative title, “Sentenced”. It felt like more than just a journal entry for me to work through privately. At one time, I wanted to write it as a way of highlighting hypocrisy in order to release my young adult anger self-righteously.
I never could finish it that way. It felt trite. I got stuck and the story didn’t seem to want to go further and I didn’t want to force it to be what I wanted. I knew instinctively that there was more for me to uncover so I would know what the real story needed to be.
Many years of self-reflection later…
I opened the file for “Sentenced” and read it with fresh eyes. I realized that I felt really heavy reading it and that I also didn’t feel the anger or injustice that I once did. No one did anything intentionally hurtful. We were just human beings bumping up against each other in the way that we do. I decided to start revising the story and creating it in a way that was fun for me. From there, the ideas began popping and I was off.
What Sentenced Became
Sentenced is no longer a rant. It’s a surreal, funny, and heartfelt little journey through guilt, expectation, and otherworldly judgment. It’s about what happens when three teen girls find themselves facing cosmic consequences for things they don’t fully understand.
There’s a glow-y celestial visitor. There are mosquito swarms and snack-cakes. And underneath it all? There’s a deeper question about how we measure goodness—and who gets to decide.
