Blackwater Parish Is Here: Launch Day Has Arrived

The day a story I kept quiet for so long finally belongs to readers

Today is the day. After months of keeping a secret that was harder to hold than almost anything I have written, Blackwater Parish is finally out in the world. It belongs to readers now, not just to me. I have been imagining this moment for a long time, and now that it is here, I mostly feel grateful.

A Day I Was Not Sure Would Come

There were stretches of writing this book when I wondered if I would ever reach a launch day at all. A southern gothic psychological thriller was a long way from Scout the goat and the bumpy pumpkin. I questioned whether I had any business writing it. I questioned whether anyone who knew my children's books would follow me into something this dark and this layered.

I kept going anyway. Not because I was certain, but because the story would not let me set it down. And here we are.

What You Are Holding When You Open It

Blackwater Parish is a slow burn southern gothic thriller about memory, control, and the long patience of revenge. Catherine Beaumont wakes in an unfamiliar house with blood beneath her nails and no memory of how she got there. Her husband is there to fill in the gaps she cannot, to explain the episodes she does not remember, and to assure her that her own mind cannot be trusted.

The medication will help, he tells her. The isolation will keep her safe. The past is better left undisturbed. It looks like devotion. It feels like love. It is something far more practiced and deliberate than either.

Around her sits a world of grand porches, manicured grounds, old loyalties, and secrets handed down like heirlooms. A housekeeper who watches too closely. A town that knows more than it will say. A patch of disturbed earth beneath an ancient oak. And a voice in the dark, calling her toward what was buried.

Why This One Felt Different to Release

Every book I have published has felt personal, but this one felt exposed. Writing about a woman whose reality is being rewritten by the people closest to her meant sitting with discomfort for a long time. My nursing years taught me how often the most dangerous harm is the quiet kind, the kind that hides behind concern and good manners. I carried that knowledge into every page.

Letting a story like that go is its own kind of brave. Once it is published, I no longer control how it lands. Readers bring their own histories to it. That is exactly as it should be, and it is still a vulnerable thing to allow.

For the Readers Who Have Been With Me Since Scout

If you found me through the Goat on the Go books or The Bumpy Pumpkin, I want you to know that the heart of my writing has not changed. I still write about belonging, about resilience, and about the courage it takes to be fully yourself in a world that would prefer you smaller and quieter. Catherine is fighting for those exact things. The setting is darker. The longing underneath is the same one I have always written toward.

For the Readers Who Are Brand New

If Blackwater Parish is the first thing of mine you have picked up, welcome. I am a full time nurse who started writing in 2024 and never quite stopped. You will find that I care about the same things across everything I make: honesty, complexity, and the belief that the right story at the right moment can shift something in a person.

Who This Book Is For

If you love domestic suspense, stories of gaslighting and control, and atmospheric southern gothic fiction in the spirit of The Silent Patient or Sharp Objects, this book was written with you in mind. It is dark, it is patient, and it does not flinch. It rewards readers who like to feel a slow dread build until the truth finally surfaces, more monstrous than anyone wants to admit.

It is also for anyone who has ever felt their own reality quietly rewritten by someone who claimed to love them. That experience lives at the center of this story. If it speaks to something you recognize, I think you will feel met here.

Where to Find It

Blackwater Parish is available now. If the story moves you, the single most helpful thing you can do is leave a review. Reviews are how other readers find a book like this one, and they mean more to an independent author than I can fully express. Every rating helps the right reader stumble onto a story that might be exactly what they needed.

Thank you for being here on launch day. Thank you for trusting me to take you somewhere new. Holding a story this close for this long and then handing it over is a strange and wonderful feeling, and you are the reason it was worth it. I have been waiting a long time to share this one, and I am so glad it is finally yours.