The Infinite If:
The chess of writing & publishing

TLDR: Let go and let life. Because your fullest life is trying to find you...if you'll let it. Where you're headed is nothing like where you've come from. ✨

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They said 2026 was going to be fast and full. I sort of didn't believe it, because I live like a turtle: slow and quiet and tucked deep inside my comfortable shell. It'll be fast and full for other people, but not for me, I thought. My life is quiet and stable. I figured the universe wouldn't pick on me if I kept a low profile.

Just: wrong.

In March, as you'll remember, I got fire horsed and had to move house. So the comfortable, familiar shell was taken away pretty much right off the dot. (Which is fine, actually, because it was too heavy to carry—but it had to be removed in order for me to see this truth.)

Mid-June, I visited a wonderful friend who lives in Pemberton, BC, in the heart of the mountains that I so love. She took me swimming in the lake. She took me to The Beer Farmers for burgers and beer. She took me from farm stand to farm stand, picking out flowers and carrots and turnips and lettuces that had grown in the very terrain we stood on. She connected me in so many ways to the pulse of the Earth.

On my way home from Pemberton, in a bit of a funk for various reasons, I drove past the old Britannia copper mine near Squamish, and something huge happened. For years I've been doubting my desire to write again, even to the point of wondering whether I even can write anymore. Could I ever? But as my eyes fell on the mine entrance and I thought about the hardworking men who spent their days in the darkness and dust earning a living so their families could eat, a soft shot of electricity coursed through me and I felt an upwelling of old, forgotten passion for this country's railway and mining history—and my once-aching desire to write the stories of the people who lived it.

Didn't see that coming. (I've since devoured two middle-grade books about the Frank slide and the building of the CPR, a thin nonfiction account of the Frank slide, and have Pierre Berton's The National Dream waiting for me on my nightstand.)

Sometimes going away makes room for the right kind of disruption. It loosens the dirt around the roots. Brings new perspectives. Reminds us that life is vast, that it's never too late to change direction, that we hold an enormous amount of power, and that nothing is impossible, not really.

That it's okay to loosen our grip and let life show us our next move.

In that third week of July (yeah, That Third Week Of July, the one every astrologer talked about for months in the run-up, with the most bizarrely precise alignments any star nerd has ever seen in all of Earth's history), I drove halfway across the province to crew at Shambhala Music Festival, where I camped for nine days in the trees and the dust and the sun and the love and the cowshit. More disruption. More dirt loosened. More perspective shifting.

I lived like a granola queen, sleeping in my new "baby camper" thanks to my son's excellent work crafting a sleeping platform in the back of my 2011 Nissan Rogue. NO MORE TENTS! I'm completely self-contained now, in a much smaller turtle shell that makes me burst with eagerness to hit the road and explore this incredible country I live in.

At the festival, I danced a bit, worked a bit, made new friends, and spent the rest of my time grounding: lying on the riverbank, reading THE SURRENDER EXPERIMENT (for the fifth time) on a blanket at my campsite, swimming in the river, walking barefoot in the grass.

I met a young farmer and cattle broker from New Zealand with a beautiful soul who did five years of sheep-shearing—one of the hardest, dirtiest, most physically and psychologically taxing jobs out there. He came into the job 100 pounds overweight, he told me, but you should see the shred on him now. Some days he would cry because it was such hard work.

I learned how to hold a rope to pull a lever to let down the water so I could have a shower. It was an entire core workout just to wash my hair.

I ate the best lamb donairs of my life.

I took waayyyyyyyyyy too much MDMA one night while out dancing with a crew medic (how was I to know? I'm new to this stuff. And she TOLD me to take that final bump), had a half-hour wondertrip in a lighted portapotty on my way back to my campsite, realized I was still on my way up and had better get the fuck back to my car before I melted or got lost among the 500 acres of tents and cars and cows and ravers, and spent the next several hours tripping absolute balls at my campsite, humming quietly while pressing my head against the seatback in my car to keep myself from flying off the planet. I did catch a nice sunrise, though.

I fell in love with picking garbage up off the ground because when you can dance while you're doing it and when you love the people you're doing it with, everything is awesome all the time.

I hated at times the heat, the bass, the dirt. I loved the huge conversations, the trust, the generosity, the heart openings, the work of cleaning up after people who were having fun. I grew into a new person—still going, and will be for a while yet.

My body stopped hurting from its constant sitting. Sore back: gone. Whiny hip: gone. Being back on the Earth, moving my body all day long, feeling the sun on my face and the river on my feet was a total reset. I. Am. Alive.

I was afraid to tackle that festival. I was afraid of all the sexiness and the wildness and the pierced and tattooed people running around naked in head-to-toe fishnet (one of whom is now a solid friend). I knew it when I signed up back in February, and that's WHY I signed up. Because I needed that kick in the ass to remind me that I can handle anything that life brings.

I drove away from Salmo utterly changed, and wide open to where life wants to take me next. Eastern Canada in the fall, and then from there...? Who knows.

They said 2026 was going to be fast and full. And they're also saying we're closing out our old life and opening into our new one, each and every one of us. I feel it. I'm seeing it unfolding in front of my eyes. By 2027, the world won't look the same. That scares me. Does it scare you? Probably. But lean into the changes. Don't resist the weirdness of the times. Of course you can't see where you're going—none of us can, and in truth, none of us ever could. Follow your energy, not your logical mind. That thing gets it wrong every time.

Open your arms and trust that life's got you, that it's going to be good and that those dreams you've held for such a long, long time aren't all that far off now. It's a great time to be creating, so slow down, clear space, go outside, breathe into your back ribs, let yourself play.

And let your fullest life find you.

What I'm paying attention to in the industry

Nonfiction sales have been trending gently downward in 2026, with the adult fiction category keeping overall sales from dipping significantly from last year. Interestingly, Allen Levi's lovely novel, THEO OF GOLDEN, is doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

Originally self-published in 2023, THEO was picked up by Atria Books (a Simon & Schuster imprint) in 2025, subsequently hitting the NYT bestseller list last November.

I think this is significant. And it makes my little hippy heart really happy, because THEO OF GOLDEN is about humanity, and the essential worthiness of every person. The story follows an elderly man who shows up in a tiny Georgia town and proceeds to purchase all 92 pencil-sketch portraits of local residents from where they've been displayed on the walls of the town's coffee shop. Without knowing a single soul in the region, Theo goes and finds each person and sits with them as they unfold their story. That's all he does: hold space, observe, appreciate, listen. He does this again and again, bringing each person their pencil sketch, opening hearts and changing lives in the process. He's a nature guy, a slow-down guy, a life-is-good-enough-just-as-it-is guy.

A you're-enough-just-as-you-are kind of guy.

That this book made the NYT bestseller list is what delights me so much. It tells me people yearn to be like Theo—to surrender our hurried ways, to reconnect with nature, to allow life to flow through us instead of rushing into the current with big gulping breaths, thinking we know best how to direct it.

It tells me people believe in the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible...and that we want to read books that show us how to get ourselves there.📚

Upcoming: Come to our memoir retreat this fall!

OK, this is a total stoke, because author Jennifer Wilson, MFA, has invited me to co-facilitate her week-long memoir retreat in Ontario cottage country this September and October. I'm honoured and SO excited to be her hosting partner. We're actually holding two weeks of retreats back to back, bookended by shorter weekend retreats (details TBA on those), so there are lots of dates to choose from. Catered meals, gorgeous private accommodations in a generations-old family cottage (plus guest house), workshops on craft and structure, somatic attunement and grounding and breathwork, and lots of time to make headway on your memoir project. You'll also receive personalized 1:1 coaching on your work in progress. Autofiction and creative nonfiction writers welcome, too.

This retreat is only for the womenfolk at this time. Check the details here.

P.S. There's a sauna 🧖‍♀️ and a lake

Get personalized feedback your writing for just $49 USD 📝

After Write On 2026, I had some people signing up to do a blue-pencil session with me. The sessions were really productive and fun, so I'm going to make the blue-pencil available as a standing offer. It's a teeny tiny way to see what it's like to have me supporting and improving your writing at an amazing price point. This link takes you to a page where you can read about what's included, and book directly in my calendar.

This month's hippie flip

Steve Judd's conversation with Sabrina Lynn. Just...this man is incredible. Watch only if you want to understand more about this epic social and energetic shift we're currently in the middle of. He breaks it down in simple terms, in a wise and unhurried way, and gives you some tools for staying steady amid the storms.

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Thanks for reading The Infinite If. ♾️