When Writing Feels Like Coming Home
What Love at the Lantern Trail Is Unlocking for Me…
There’s a particular feeling that settles into my body when I sit down to write Love at the Lantern Trail. It isn’t urgency. It isn’t pressure. It’s recognition.
This story feels like a reunion with parts of myself, with places I’ve loved, and with a version of storytelling that feels less like striving and more like remembering.
Writing this book feels warm and calming, like exhaling into a familiar space. It invites me to explore pieces of my youth while holding them alongside the growth that comes with growing up. There’s a tenderness to it… a quiet wish that I could step back into certain moments of my own life and offer myself more grace, more empathy. The if I knew then what I know now ache.
Spending time with the characters and settings in Love at the Lantern Trail feels cozy and comforting. It makes me laugh. It reminds me to soften. I love the way Everly sees the world, and there’s something deeply soothing about knowing I’m not the only one navigating life through a neurodivergent lens. Writing her feels like being understood.
Choosing Familiar Over Flashy
This project is different from writing something “new” or overtly ambitious. I intentionally stepped back into the version of Amberlight Valley that feels closest to the one viewers experienced in Hashtag Blessed—a place rooted in connection, relatability, and coincidence magic.
There are thousands of love stories in the world, but only some of them feel like home. I believe we need more stories that invite us back to pieces of ourselves we may have tucked away or forgotten. This story might not reinvent cozy romance… but it speaks to places in the heart that need tending, and that feels just as important.
As I started writing, I found myself wondering what Everly might have been like as a teenager—and that curiosity led me straight down Nostalgia Avenue. Rather than relying on explicit memories or flashbacks, I let her environment do the remembering. Her favorite posters, her collectibles, the small details of her space… all of them mirror things that once lived in my own teenage room.
After spending so much time with Brigid, Morgan, and Mary in the Amberlight Valley series, exploring Everly’s youth offered another way to understand her. It revealed her personality through texture and tone rather than exposition, and that felt truer somehow.
Autumn as an Emotional Anchor
Autumn has always felt grounding to me. It’s not too cold where I live in the mountains, and it naturally invites change—shedding, shifting, evolving. Letting go.
That same rhythm moves through this story. The characters are changing, just like the leaves. They cling to warm mugs when anxiety creeps in. They wrap themselves in comfort by connecting with one another. Like so many of us, they’re looking for something to hold them through transition.
This book, well, trilogy, is inviting me back into writing for joy. Writing has always mattered deeply to me, but sometimes projects carry so much weight that the joy gets buried under expectation. With this story, I’m leaning into the coziest corners of my imagination and letting the characters lead.
When I stop trying to control the pace or outcome, they reveal themselves more fully… especially in the quiet moments when they’re simply talking to themselves.
While part of me would love to write like a speed demon, I’m letting this story unfold gently. I want the experience of writing it to feel soothing—so that same feeling carries through to the reader as they wander through its pages.
Coming Home Isn’t Going Backward
Everly begins this story by returning home, and she carries all the complicated emotions that come with that choice. Real life is no different. We’re often taught that starting over means failure—that going home means regression.
But coming home doesn’t mean going backward.
One of the biggest hopes I have for readers is that they see this truth reflected in Everly’s journey: Sometimes the most beautiful surprises come after we hit the reset button. Even when it’s uncomfortable. Even when it feels uncertain.
There is still hope on the horizon.
Sometimes, it’s waiting right where we began.
🕯️ Wander into Amberlight and beyond—sign up for updates, secrets, and the occasional enchanted surprise.
