My sixth-grade teacher assigned us a poem to memorize. Mine was “Stopping By The Woods on a Snowy Evening,” by Robert Frost. It was hard for me. But I remember loving the poem itself, not the memorization part. I liked standing in those snowy woods that weren’t mine. After Frost, it was the Romantics. Then the Transcendentalists, then the Gothic and Victorian. And when I watched Mr. Konevitch, who coached our high school offensive line, pace the front of the class reading The Merchant of Venice with his deep booming voice, it dawned on me. It was cool for men to love poetry.

It took me 14 years to finish my undergraduate degree. I was too busy touring the country in an indie acoustic band you’ve never heard of. My twenties were all about George MacDonald, T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and, of course, Augustine. Those minds did deep work on mine. It was all about the art of it all—“the achieve of, the mastery of the thing.” I wanted to write songs, poems, fantasy fiction, and the occasional nonfiction polemic. MacDonald painted my vision, Lewis taught me beauty, and Eliot gave me the groan. And Chesterton, well, he gave me the passion of the Dynamiters.

For the last 18 years, I followed that dream. Which took me to Atlanta, where I took editing, ghostwriting, scriptwriting, and brand identity jobs, all the while finishing a Master’s in Religion and Christian Thought. I never planned on the PhD. But it had its own plan for me. I moved my family of three daughters (all under five) to Oxford, England, where I studied beauty in the works of C.S. Lewis. The doctoral thesis was a new dimension of writing I’d never experienced. It was wholly imaginative—it forces originality on you. Not in artistic expression but in thought.

In the nine years since, I’ve continued to make my living from writing. I coach authors, creatives, and entrepreneurs, and collaborate with publishers and authors. I speak and teach when invited and write all the time.

I’ve authored four nonfiction books, with The Beauty Chasers the most recent—a meditation on what it means to chase beauty and recapture the wonder of the Divine in daily life. I’ve written two novels (well, Leighton Fig is almost finished) that are seeking publication. Right now, I’m deep in two long-form research projects — one on C.S. Lewis and the idea of the North, and another exploring Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre through the lens of Northern aesthetics. Both are stretching me in ways that feel less academic and more like a pilgrimage.

This space is an extension of all it—the poetry, the cultural groan (thank you, Eliot!), our metaphysical angst, and the hope that beauty can and will heal us. It’s a clarion call from “the back of the world” reminding us that there’s more to life than a screen and there’s more to truth than a land full of monologuers and no listeners.

I hope this space inspires you. Because inspiration gets a raw deal these days. It’s not about Hallmark movies and Thomas Kincaid paintings. Inspiration is fire from heaven. And we all could use a touch of its spark these days.

Expect cultural deep dives, short-form inspiration, field notes from an artist-writer-scholar, and just enough C.S. Lewis to keep us all honest. Oh, and a few recipes thrown in for good measure.