14 Years of Blogging — To Whom It May Concern 💖

On July 27, 2012, I published my first blog post on The Nerdy Girlie.

I had no idea what I was doing. I just knew I had things to share and nowhere to share them.

Fourteen years later I'm sitting here with a stack of 30 signed copies of my debut novel on my kitchen counter, heading to San Diego Comic Con in less than two weeks, and I genuinely cannot believe the road that got me here.

So let's talk about it.

2012 — The Beginning

The Nerdy Girlie started as a place for a girl in San Diego who loved pop culture, conventions, coffee, and had a lot of feelings she didn't know what to do with. I started covering San Diego Comic Con — documenting everything, photographing everything, writing about everything.

I didn't know then that this blog would eventually become the foundation for a novel. I just knew I loved writing and I loved showing up here.

2013-2015 — The Music Era

At the end of 2012 I heard a song that changed everything.

Harbour Lights by A Silent Film. One note and I was gone.

What followed were years of concerts, photography, road trips to shows, and a community of fellow fans called the Lamplighters who became some of the most meaningful people in my life.

I flew a thousand miles alone to see this band in Oregon. I stood front row at The Casbah in San Diego while Robert dedicated a song to his Lamplighters and pointed directly at me. I photographed shows at The Fox Theater in Boulder, The Constellation Room in Santa Ana, The Black Sheep in Colorado Springs, and a little British pub in Studio City called The Fox and Hounds where a band called The Filthy Souls performed a song called Listen For Yourself that would eventually become the heartbeat of my novel.

I was also co-creating Five Fandom Friday with my friend Kristin, building something genuinely collaborative and joyful in the blogging community.

These years were some of the most creatively alive I have ever felt. They were also some of the hardest.

2015 — The Dark and the Light

I found a post from October 2015 this week that stopped me in my tracks.

I had gone to two A Silent Film shows — San Diego first, then LA. The San Diego show was magical. Robert dedicated Lamplight to his Lamplighters and pointed at me and my friend in the crowd. 

I tried not to cry. I blew him a kiss. I grabbed my phone to record it.

I had no idea then that this band, this moment, this community would one day become the heart of my debut novel.

The LA show was different. I was going through seven months of something I couldn't quite name in that post — I kept it vague, the way you do when you're not ready to say the real thing out loud. I had visited LACMA alone beforehand, plugged in my headphones, and wandered the galleries trying to be invisible. A Lamplighter meet-up I was supposed to host had no one show up. I almost didn't stay for the show.

What I couldn't say then: my marriage was falling apart.

I ended the post with: "Here's to better days, staying up and amazing music."

Reading it now — knowing what better days actually looked like when they finally arrived — I want to go back and hug that version of me. She had no idea what was coming. The hard part first, and then something so much better than she could have imagined.

2015-2022 — 100 Cups of Coffee

After the divorce I started 100 Cups of Coffee — a series about dating, identity, and figuring out who you are when the life you planned falls apart.

I dated. I moved from LA to Denver. I bought my own house. I figured out what I actually wanted my life to look like when it was fully, completely mine.

I wrote about all of it here, honestly and without much filter, because that's the only way I know how to write.

And somewhere in the middle of all that rebuilding, I kept coming back to a story I had started writing in 2013 and never finished.

2022-2025 — Finding My Person and Finding My Ending

I met my husband. He is everything I was looking for and a few things I didn't know I needed.

And when I opened up that old manuscript again — the one I had started ten years earlier, the one I had even pitched to agents unfinished (LOL, don't do that) — I finally knew how it ended.

Because I had lived the ending. I knew what it felt like to wait for something real and then actually get it.

My husband read the manuscript twice to help with edits. He is, without question, one of the reasons Musical Awakening exists today.

2026 — The Year Everything Became Real

On June 2, 2026 — my old wedding anniversary, a date I wanted to reclaim — Musical Awakening launched as an ebook.

On July 2nd the paperback dropped.

Fourteen years after my first blog post — I'm writing this with 30 signed author copies sitting on my kitchen counter, heading to San Diego Comic Con on July 24th for the first time in eleven years.

San Diego, where June Snow went to university. Where Richmond Adams plays in 2015. Where I stood front row at The Casbah a decade ago trying not to cry while a band pointed at me from the stage.

I'm going back. With my book. With my husband. With buttons and bookmarks and signed copies and absolutely no ability to contain my emotions about any of it!

What 14 Years of Blogging Taught Me

Everything I have ever written on this blog — every concert recap, every Five Fandom Friday, every 100 Cups of Coffee post, every honest and oversharing piece about figuring out my place in time and space — was practice.

Practice for the novel. Practice for the person I was becoming. Practice for this moment.

I used to end posts with "Here's to better days."

I don't need to say that anymore. The better days are here.

Thank you for fourteen years of showing up to read what I write. You have no idea what it has meant.

📖 Musical Awakening is available now in ebook and paperback on Amazon. If you've been here for any part of this journey — this book is for you.

How long have you been reading this blog? Drop a comment — I'd love to know. 💖