I wrote a book! It’s called What Will Outlast Me?

and you can preorder it now.

What Will Outlast Me? is a memoir-in-essays that explores the question: How do you live knowing that you will die? 

I began writing What Will Outlast Me? In the summer of 2012, after my dad gave me a creepy photograph of my three great uncles, lined up in their coffins, after being killed by a lightning strike. I couldn’t get the image out of my mind.

I was repulsed. I was fascinated. I wanted to look away, and I couldn’t stop looking. This paradoxical tension I felt sparked inspiration. I had something fascinating to research and to write about, so I did. That first draft became the essay, “Lightning Flowers,” and was published in the Colorado Review and was named a Notable Essay in Best American Essays.

In the following years, I noticed whenever death brushed near, or when memories of death resurfaced. I started writing about housefires, car accidents, and police shootings. I recalled butchering animals for food, being a new mother terrified of SIDS, receiving a cancer diagnosis, evacuating for a hurricane, surviving a pandemic, and more. Getting really close to death, I realized, helped me to be mindful and notice life, and what I noticed was that the world is an awe-inspiring place. 

Though the subjects are serious, often life or death matters, I’ve told these stories with warmth and wisdom. The narrative is buoyed by breathtaking honesty-and a bit of the grotesque-like a misguided attempt to cook a whole hog's head from my beloved, late grandmother's recipe.

What Will Outlast Me?  is a moving, heartfelt meditation on how to face mortality, how to grieve, but most importantly, how to awaken to the ephemeral beauty of the world. This book is a powerful reminder that what will outlast us is those we love.

I hope that you will pre-order a copy of What Will Outlast Me?

Why are pre-orders important?

• They will help my book gain visibility and help my publisher maintain inventory. Unsolicited Press is a small, womxn-owned, all-volunteer press. Unlike a Big 4 publishing conglomerate, Unsolicited champions exceptional literature over profit and marketability.

• Unsolicited Press was a perfect fit for my work because their mission is “embracing the quirky” while being “rebellious, relentless, and philanthropic.”

• Last year over 4 million books were published in the U.S.. It is very crowded in the book-selling world, but you, Reader of Spirit, have found my work in a very noisy world. You get my writing.

• The best way you can support my writing right now is to pre-order my book. If each of you that reads this newsletter regularly would buy a copy of my book, I’d be close to selling through my first printing, which would mean a lot for the book’s success.

I would be so grateful if you’d pre-order What Will Outlast Me? today.

You can Pre-Order from any of these online retailers:

Thank you for reading my work. Connecting with you, readers, is why I love being a writer.