From Dust to Glass: How a Short Story Became a Novel

It took me seven years to get Broken Glass out of my head and into my hands.

It started with a short story project I created with my then-new boyfriend, Kwame. We met because of writing—naturally—and decided to challenge each other creatively. The prompt? A story set in a cabin in the mountains, with a love story that wasn’t really a love story.

Kwame went full psychological horror. I veered into psychological thriller meets drama.

Two styles. One starting point. And honestly? It was fun—twisting a single motif in different directions.

Then… life.

We moved from Georgia to Nebraska. Had our first child. Faced some wildly unpredictable professional and personal detours. Rented our first house together. And then—yep—a second child.

The stories? They gathered dust. We’d revisit them here and there, talk through ideas on long drives or sleepless nights, but they were still mostly concepts, not manuscripts.

Then Kwame got serious.

He set a publishing goal (several times, actually 😂) and finally—truly—sat down between work and wrangling our girls, and finished…his…book!

I was amazed… and, if we’re being honest, a little jealous. (Truth is truth.) That was the moment I realized: my story could be real too.

At that point, I had about 16 short chapters I’d written over the years. I used to think they were borderline iconic. But when I picked them up again?

Yeah. No.

They didn’t make sense.

There were flashes of something almost great, but the structure, the clarity—the actual writing—just wasn’t there. So… I scrapped most of it.

At first, it felt like failure. Like I had wasted years of ideas.

But once I got over the sting, something else took its place: inspiration.

Inspiration led to brainstorming. Brainstorming to outlining. Outlining to drafting. Drafting to finally writing a novel.

The original title was Eclipse of a Blood Moon—a metaphor for the shadow of the past self being covered by the present one. It sounded poetic at the time, but as the story evolved, so did its name.

That’s how we arrived at Broken Glass.

It fit. It still fits.

There’s even a thread of my longtime obsession—Alice in Wonderland—woven through the entire novel. Characters that mirror the classic cast. Quotes from the original text as chapter epigraphs. One character even calls it out directly.

That integration made the book feel even more personal. Like a conversation between my present voice and the stories that shaped me long before I wrote my own.

Writing a novel was never on my bucket list. But now that I’m in the final stages?

I’m all in.

And I can’t wait to share Broken Glass with you.

Have you ever walked away from a project, only to return years later and see it in a whole new light? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.