How I became an author and book coach—in Portugal

My love for writing and books started at age seven. There were two catalysts.

First, I read, and fell in love with, The Chronicles of Narnia. I was an early reader, already reading independently by the time I entered kindergarten. When I read C. S. Lewis’s series, it was like my life broke open and an entire universe of possibility was before me.

I was transported. Transfixed. Suddenly, I had a way to leave my hometown of Boise, Idaho, and travel far, far away to the land of Narnia. I especially resonated with Lucy, the youngest of four Pevensie children, who was overprotected and undervalued until she was eventually recognized for her heart and wisdom and eventually named queen.

Second, I wrote my first poem, which I entered into a statewide poetry contest. I placed second—which I often say was good enough to encourage my passion but not so good that I got an ego. From there, I was hooked.

I attended a Christian school throughout elementary and high school, and while I sometimes struggled to fit within the system I had been placed in, one area where I always felt at home was in English class. At home, I read voraciously. Someone gifted us the entire set of The Baby-Sitters Club—and I mean all 100-plus books—and I read them multiple times. I would stay up late, turning on the little cubby light in my waterbed after my parents went to sleep, sneaking in extra hours of reading. I devoured mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, and basically any fiction work I could get my hands on.

I also started my entrepreneurial journey. I sold candy at our community pool. I started my own Baby-Sitters Club, sitting by the phone that never rang. I began babysitting regularly at ten years old and nannying full time during the summers at fourteen. I sold hemp bracelets at school with my best friend until our little business was shut down.

In junior high, I had a strict but skilled teacher, Mr. Stadtlander, who drilled us with grammar, insisting that we memorize prepositions and ace our exams. And I also had a passionate literature teacher, whose name escapes me, who had us do mock trials for Macbeth and exposed us to heartbreaking, humorous, and inspiring books. All the while, my love for writing blossomed, and I remained hooked on reading.

Because I struggled in my school environment, reading was often an escape for me. It allowed me to go elsewhere, to live other lives, sometimes in other worlds or on other planets. I sank into the narratives. I lived them. And as I did, I developed empathy and understanding beyond what the culture around me allowed—well-meaning but limited views about what a woman should and could be. Even as I was regularly punished for being “too much” at school, for talking back, for refusing to bend to the system, I was accepted fully in my world of reading by the characters who became real to me.

Fast forward to high school, and while I won’t detail my truly rebellious period, let’s just say teen Stacy struggled a bit. But even so, I never lost my love of reading and writing. Even as I nearly failed other classes, I was always in honor’s English and taking extra classes in English and art. When I discovered that the Idaho state curriculum only required me to do two years of math and science, I saw that as my ticket to even more arts in my high school experience.

At seventeen, I experienced a difficult life event that, again, I won’t detail here. This experience extended into my twenties, and the side effect was that I became incredibly responsible and studious. I went from barely getting C’s in most of my classes (except English and art) to graduating high school a semester early. And while my two-and-a-half years of bad grades meant I was admitted to Boise State University provisionally, I eventually graduated magna cum laude and went on to graduate summa cum laude from the University of Cincinnati.

College was both a difficult and beautiful period of my life. I worked hard—really, really hard. Throughout most of my education, I worked at least two jobs, sometimes three, and took 1.5–2 times the course load of my peers. I eventually graduated with my bachelor’s in English writing with a minor in visual art, having the opportunity to take so many meaningful courses that shaped how I work today: poetry, literary theory, nonfiction writing, book arts, typography, graphic design, sculpture, painting, drawing, and more. I loved my program at BSU and my professors, many of whom I still think of fondly to this day. I also did my first internship at the Boise State alumni magazine, working with my first true mentor and now dear friend, Jennifer Wheeler.

Right after my bachelor’s degree was complete, my then-fiancé (now husband) and I moved to the Dominican Republic, where I taught high school language arts. This was a difficult choice because I had applied to graduate school and had two full-funding offers to great universities. Needless to say, my dad was not happy when I decided to give those up and move to the Caribbean with a boy.

Teaching was hard, but I loved my students and felt I was making a real difference in their lives. My time in the DR was formative in so many ways: I left the comfort of my hometown and stepped fully into a big adventure. I learned Spanish and danced in colmados and took last-minute buses to explore the beautiful island. I started my business there, working from our one-bedroom apartment, usually from our bed since the bedroom was the only room with air conditioning.

We moved from the DR to Vietnam, where I taught English, both as a second language and also kindergarten. Vietnam was exciting, and we had so many incredible adventures there! My partner and I loved working together as teachers, walking to school together every morning, taking lunch breaks together. I kept building my business there and completed a personal challenge to query thirty publications in thirty days. This required hours of work every night, but I did it! While I didn’t hear back from twenty-nine of the publications I pitched, one got back to me, and I landed my first ghostwriting job, writing a third of an academic textbook.

Alongside building my business, I applied for graduate school again. The economy was not as good as when I’d originally applied, but I still got a full funding offer to do an editorial research assistantship at a scientific journal at the University of Cincinnati, which paid for my tuition in the professional writing and editing program, plus a stipend and health insurance.

During the summer between Vietnam and graduate school, I told my partner that I didn’t want to look for a job but wanted to lean fully into my business. I moved in with my parents and he moved in with his grandpa as we planned our wedding. Over that summer, alongside planning my wedding, I helped launch a regional magazine, where I was managing editor, and connected with Maryanna Young, a publisher in my area, who recognized my skill and brought me in as a regular editor for her company. I wrote and edited ten-plus hours per day. Book after book, article after article, I truly couldn’t believe I was living my wildest dreams working in publishing!

I wasn’t sleeping much, but I was happy. And soon, I was a newlywed heading off to graduate school. Just three days after our wedding, we hitched a trailer to our Subaru and drove the 2,000 miles to UC.

I loved the program and being a full-time student, but I was still working a lot building my business, usually working nearly full time alongside my assistantship and studies. Very few of my peers had “real” jobs like mine; most were either not working or doing low-pressure jobs or internships. Around this time, I started working with one of my beloved clients, the late Dr. Andrew Myers, and his business partner, Dr. Lou Ignarro, a Nobel-Prize-winning scientist. Alongside writing and content strategy, I began proofreading the Sam’s Club magazine, Healthy Living Made Simple, which reached eleven million readers every two months. I was the final proofreader of the magazine, which meant I sometimes woke up in the middle of the night in a panic, thinking I’d missed a typo! I was also starting my speaking career, flying back to Idaho to speak at a conference during the middle of the school year.

Just before the close of my first year, I got a life-changing opportunity: become managing editor of the publication. I was just twenty-seven years old, getting an opportunity many people work their entire careers for. The catch: I needed to move back to Idaho, and my graduate program was entirely in person. I would need to quit graduate school or pass on this opportunity—which felt like an impossible choice.

I spoke with my graduate advisor, the late Dr. Mary Beth Debs. She listened as I poured out my conundrum, then looked at me with the gentlest yet surest expression and said, “Why do you have to choose?” She worked with me to become the first-ever hybrid student to graduate the program, putting in extra time and energy to support me from afar. I know I thanked her before she passed, but I’ll never get to thank her enough for the impact she made on my life.

Months passed, and my mentor and friend, Tim Vandehey, decided to step down as executive editor. He also transitioned out of the ghostwriting he was doing for the two doctors, and recommended me for the role. What a gift! I loved working with Dr. Myers, his sister Amy, and the entire team. It was absolutely pivotal to my entire career—from leading as executive editor of Healthy Living Made Simple to ghostwriting a book for Dr. Myers and Dr. Ignarro to crafting 800-plus pieces of content, including global campaigns, video scripts, and more. Alongside this work, I continued editing books and eventually stepped into ghostwriting books full time.

I had my first child and published my first book, The Editor’s Eye—which, full-circle moment, was published by the traditional publishing house that gave me my first ghostwriting gig! I completed my graduate degree while pregnant with my second child. All the while, my husband and I had our eyes and hearts set on moving back abroad. We missed our international life, but we knew we had to do some building before we could make that dream happen.

I continued ghostwriting books for several years, drawing on my expertise as a book editor and building systems around my writing to enable me to write 2.5 books per year. After working with a number of entrepreneurs, I felt like I had completed an MBA with every project, which helped me build high-level business acumen. I began teaching what I knew, having run my first “How to Write a Book” workshop while I was pregnant with my second child and continuing to educate and speak both locally and across the US. I started coaching authors lightly during this time—I hadn’t yet formulated my system or coaching approach, but I began integrating coaching into my ghostwriting and editing work.

Around this time, my youngest child started having major health complications. I won’t go into detail here, but it’s an important underpinning to everything I do today. The pull to be present for him eventually inspired me to build a business beyond myself, but I wasn’t ready yet to step fully into that vision.

Eventually, we did make our international living dream happen when we made our first move as a family to Thailand in 2018. This was both an incredible life experience and a complete disaster. I was traveling every four to six weeks during this time, delivering keynotes in the US, running programs and multiday trainings, and ghostwriting 2.5 books per year. My second book, Growing Influence, coauthored with my dear friend Ron Price, came out shortly after we moved. Business was so good but also so hard to manage as my son’s health issues took a turn for the absolute worst.

Things got too hard in Thailand, and we decided to move again. This time, we looked for a place that would feed our souls and be safe for our family—something we hadn’t taken seriously enough the first time around. We eventually found Portugal, came home for a transitional summer to get our visas processed, and moved to the Algarve.

Around this time, I was firmly stepping into coaching. I leveraged the years of experience I had as a book editor and ghostwriter, now nearly ten years’ worth, plus my formal education and business acumen, to coach authors writing books as part of their business, marketing, and impact strategy. As I watched my clients succeed—growing their businesses substantially, stepping into their dream lives, I realized I wanted to do this all the time. I also realized that coaching would give me more freedom to be present for my family, especially if I could build a program that was scalable. I had already spent years building my personal system for ghostwriting and coaching others. Bonus: I was able to draw on my curriculum design experience from my teaching years; we had gone through an accreditation, so I was shoved into the madhouse that is an accreditation year and learned how to not only plan curriculum but also document and systematize it.

From here, Nonfiction Book School, my core curriculum for all my nonfiction book coaching—private book coaching, group book coaching, and my book-writing self-study program—was born. I tested the education first live, delivering the sessions via Zoom, and eventually invested months into recording and editing the education and building out the learning plan. This enabled me to show up more fully for the authors I have the honor of supporting as a book coach. And when I realized the authors needed more support from me after the first draft, I launched my author community, the Author Influence Circle.

From the start, I niched in nonfiction. As I’ve matured as a book coach, I’ve narrowed my areas of focus: business, leadership, social equity, health/wellness, science/medicine, keynote memoir, and personal development. And I specialize in book positioning and strategy, helping authors align their books with their big vision and craft a “catalyst book” that will become a shelf-stable business growth and sustainability tool for years to come. I’ve now written, ghostwritten, or coauthored eighteen books, and directly contributed to more than 100 throughout my sixteen years in publishing—plus impacted hundreds more authors.

I’ve left out the awards I’ve received and other notable accomplishments. You can find those on my website or my LinkedIn profile. But the point of sharing my story isn’t to impress you; it’s to share that I am all in on this journey as a book coach and author. I have loved the written word since I was a child, immersed myself in learning how to write well, and developed myself into the coach I am today through hard work, experience, formal education, and a lot of love for the work I’m honored to get to do every single day.

And who knows? Maybe the work I’m doing today will inspire another seven-year-old girl who feels misunderstood and underappreciated to step into her power and live her dreams, just like Queen Lucy.

Ask me anything below! I love hearing from you and personally read and reply to every single comment.

P.S. This is a genuinely human article. No AI was used to write this piece.