The Summer of Everything: What It Actually Looks Like to Do All of This at Once

Two book launches, a new business, a full-time nursing career, and the truth about imperfect progress

I want to tell you the truth about this summer.

Because the curated version would look impressive and the real version is considerably messier, and I think the real version is the one actually worth sharing.

What Is Actually Happening

This summer I am launching two books. Blackwater Parish, my debut southern gothic thriller, and In the Wild, Wide World, a new rhyming children's picture book. These are releasing around the same time, which is either very exciting or very chaotic, and on most days it is genuinely both.

At the same time, I am launching Author Visibility Studio, a resource for indie authors that I have been building and planning carefully. It is something I believe in deeply and have put enormous care into, and it also requires its own attention and energy to bring into the world properly.

And I am still a full-time nurse. That part does not pause for book launches or business announcements. Patients do not reschedule their needs because I have a publication date.

What People See Versus What Is True

On the outside, I hope this looks like an exciting season of productivity and creative expansion. On the inside, it looks like a lot of early mornings and late nights and to-do lists that breed new items faster than I can cross old ones off.

It looks like writing a thriller in the spaces between patient charts and pediatric assessments. It looks like working on a rhyming children's book at a kitchen table after a long shift, reading the lines aloud quietly so I can feel the rhythm without waking the neighbors. It looks like building a business framework in the fragments of time that exist around everything else.

None of this is a complaint. I want to be clear about that. This is the life I have built because these are the things that matter to me. But I think it is worth being honest that doing it all is less of a superpower and more of a choice made repeatedly, often imperfectly, in the direction of something you believe in.

What the Imperfect Version Looks Like

Some days the words come easily and the energy is there and I genuinely feel like all of this is possible. Some days I am too tired to write anything good and I do it anyway and it is mediocre and I fix it later. Some days I skip a planned writing session because rest is also part of sustainability, and I am a nurse, I know what happens to people who run themselves into the ground.

The blog post schedule has slipped a few times. The social media presence is not as consistent as I would like it to be. There are things on the project list that have been there longer than I intended.
And yet: the books are real. The business is real. The progress is real, even when it is slow.

Why I Am Telling You This

The principle behind The Bumpy Pumpkin, that being imperfect and different is not a disqualification, applies to creative journeys too. The author who publishes while working full-time, who launches a business between nursing shifts, who writes a thriller and a children's book in the same season, does not need to be doing it perfectly to be doing it well.

Showing up consistently and imperfectly in the direction of the thing that matters is the whole work. I have written about this for children and for parents and it turns out it is true for me too.

What This Summer Is Teaching Me

I am learning that holding multiple big things at once requires more grace toward yourself than I typically offer myself. I am learning that done and imperfect is more useful to the people I am trying to serve than perfect and delayed. I am learning that my nursing training, which taught me to triage and prioritize and make decisions under pressure, is genuinely useful in creative work too.

I am also learning that this community, the readers who follow along and send kind messages and show up for the books, makes all of it feel worth it in a way that nothing else quite does.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for making this summer's chaos feel like it matters.

It does. It really does.