Like a lot of writers, I found joy in putting words on paper early—though my first “book” was about a girl and her pet duck, complete with illustrations. The details are fuzzy, but the impulse wasn’t: I liked building stories, and I liked shaping language.

That interest followed me through high school, where I spent three years as a creative writing student in the George Caleb Bingham Academy of the Arts, a summer program through the Independence, Missouri school district. That experience didn’t just deepen my love for storytelling—it introduced me to the less glamorous side of writing: revision, editing, and the work it takes to make a story hold together.

In 2012, when I began writing novel-length fiction, I received a fortune cookie that read: “You have a charming way with words and should write a book.” It was a small sentence, but it stuck—and it nudged me toward taking my writing more seriously.

Not long after starting my first novel (which now lives quietly in a drawer, never to be seen again), I co-founded a writers’ group in Kansas City. That group became my editorial training ground. It’s where I learned how to give useful feedback, how to read critically without flattening voice, and how to balance encouragement with honesty. In many ways, that’s where I became an editor.

In 2018, I co-founded Ant Colony Press with local Kansas City publisher and creative Jordan Belcher, serving as lead acquisitions editor and editorial supervisor. During that time, I edited and helped publish seven novels across a range of genres, working closely with authors through developmental, line, and proofreading stages. It was a formative experience—one that deepened my understanding of the publishing process and the responsibility that comes with editing someone else’s work.

Ant Colony Press closed just before the pandemic, but the work didn’t stop. I continued editing both published and unpublished manuscripts and refining my approach to craft-focused, writer-centered editing.

In 2024, I completed certified professional development in copyediting and proofreading through Knowadays, formalizing skills I had been practicing for years. Around the same time, A3W Editorial took shape—not as a pivot, but as a distillation of everything I’d learned as both a writer and an editor.

My first love remains fiction. I specialize in helping writers strengthen their stories by focusing on structure, clarity, and intention before sentence-level polish. I also work with business owners, students, and creatives on copyediting, proofreading, and other editorial services where precision matters.

I don’t hold an English degree. I earned my undergraduate degree in psychology from UMKC, taking as many writing electives as I could along the way. As a first-generation college graduate, practicality mattered—and psychology felt like the safest path. If I had it to do over again, I’d probably choose English. But the lack of a time machine has taught me something useful: expertise isn’t just academic. It’s built through sustained practice, professional development, and years of close reading.

Since 2012, I’ve written more than 800,000 words across ten novels through National Novel Writing Month alone. I’m currently self-publishing my first romance series, and dreaming up several others. Writing and editing are not separate parts of my life—they inform each other constantly.

At the core of my work is a simple belief:
Good revision isn’t about doing more. It’s about fixing the right thing at the right time.

That’s the lens I bring to every manuscript.