Why are You Writing These Stories? What is Mount Jewel?

I have always loved to write, always wanted to be an author. I wrote fictional short stories when I was young, and had plenty of grand ideas for large stories (mostly involving dragons). I wrote and practiced philosophy all through college. I’ve had a running list of ideas and plots to write about forever. But doing the actual writing is different! Sitting down for days and days and chipping away at a story is much harder than coming up with ideas for one.

Amanda (my wife) and I had a property in the Coarsegold area that was high up on a hill—the highest point for quite a few miles. We had a glamp site there for a while until the county shut us down for our property not being zoned properly. We thought it would be cool to offer a spooky night around Halloween, where someone stays there and we make it a little extra creepy (if that’s what they wanted). Part of that experience was having a book there that describes the campsite, and an abduction that occurs there!

That would be a spooky nighttime read! So I started writing.

Alas, the county shut us down before Halloween came around, and before I finished.

But I had some momentum. I had built the habit of writing, had a good story (that ended up being much deeper than just creepy hillbilly abduction), and had more ideas about the beautiful setting I had created, which was a hyperbolic version of the land our glampsite was on.

That’s Mount Jewel. In the stories, it’s way, way larger. And magical. And underneath… there are secrets.

I’m writing (at least) three stories in this setting. One set in the present (2025), one far in the past, and one in the future. They will all be different genres, and readable in any order.

You can keep up with my writing progress on my website, or through my newsletter! The website has a progress bar for everything currently in progress.

Thanks so much for reading!