Writing has been the most intense/high-volume medium of my life. You probably wouldn’t have guessed that (given I’m “just a tuba player”), but it’s true. I have written in all forms and mediums: novels, short stories, essays, blog posts, academic articles, poems, plays, and whatever else you can think of. 

Novels

My first novel was The Solars (2011). I was thirteen years old and convinced I had a story to be told. When no one took it seriously, I took it into my own hands and figured out (alone) how to self-publish and register it with the US Copyright Office (you can still look it up). No one did anything with that. So, believing that was a fluke, I completed eight more before graduating high school. (Didn’t see book number one? How about number five? No? Seven? Eight? Nine? Hello?)

Novel writing served multiple purposes for me in adolescence into adulthood. Primarily, it was a compulsion for me to write my psychological truth down somewhere. Secondarily, it was a way for me to feel like I had companions. Tertiarily, it was a coping mechanism (perfectly normal coping mechanism). I wrote the same structural story in nine drastically different ways: A (lonely) girl with extraordinary power lived her entire life believing she was ordinary. She was surrounded by people who recognized her extraordinariness but kept her contained, using the power for themselves. And the real scary part: every novel universe stopped where the protagonist would need to reclaim her power and defeat the villain. I wasn’t able to finish the story, until I left my marriage. (I either didn’t finish the manuscript or I finished it and immediately started a sequel that then became unfinished. Counting the unfinished ones, we have sixteen.)

The tenth novel was Siren, and that was the first one to finish without a sequel in April 2026 after a decade of writing and living (See its page in The Vision to learn more). The eleventh was a rewrite of The Solars (it’s a completely different book than the thirteen-year-old original) that finished in June 2026 as the first book in a trilogy. (Somehow, while earning three degrees and launching a solo career, I managed to work on two novels.) I am currently undergoing a project to rewrite the other eight adolescent novels for publication to give my inner-child the recognition she desperately needed.

My novel writing characteristically uses the same embodiment I use in my mediums of performance. I constantly switch first-person POV’s to capture every character’s interiority and logic (to the point where even I’m sometimes convinced the “villain” may be forgiven because of their childhood trauma). I also don’t like setting the scene with beautiful ornate prose to describe the weather (The weather isn’t relevant—get me to the story.) and prefer dialogue-heavy writing (like playwriting!).

Poems

I remember the days of forced poetry assignments in English class. I could rarely follow the prescribed form because I thought creative writing got to be creative (that would make too much sense). In my adult life, I started using poetry as a mode to capture how I felt in moments of intense emotion. All of my poetry for Visions was written in this way. The poems that have some institutional validation already were written during my eating disorder treatment at the Renfrew Center, and subsequently were published in their magazine in 2024. “Fire,” “I Choose You,” and “Armor” are pivotal poems that are in Act II of Visions. 

Playwriting

I often forget that I am a playwright because it doesn’t come up very often, but my 2005 debut on the adventures of Toady and Toadinator was my first long-form writing.

I wrote a couple plays in high school that were never produced. During my master’s at Michigan State University, I was selected for the Transforming MSU Playwriting Fellowship in 2020 where I wrote “Diversity” without Inclusion, a Zoom play that was performed in 2020. Currently, I am developing Caged as a prequel to my novel Siren that dramatizes my “Unlocked Door” Thesis (see more in The Vision.). 

Academic Writing

I don’t want to spend too much time here because this world doesn’t feel too reflective of the current Jazzie., but I have several publications in academic music journals from over the years. Most of my writings have been on Black representation in the field, my experience as a “marginalized” brass player, and then abbreviated versions of my doctoral dissertation on the value of Negro Spirituals for instrumentalists. You can find the specifics in my CV here.