Hi there.

Welcome to Before First Light, the space I’ve chosen to publicly share the words I purple pen before dawn.

This might be my messy middle with a few meltdown moments here and there. I’m tired of ignoring them, hiding them, running from them.

Before First Light is a homecoming.
For me.
Perhaps for you.

Welcome, friend.
I’m Jill. Just Jill.

A writer of more than 2,500 words a day, five days a week—at least—crafted before the sun dares to shine.

Why this space exists

Something shifted.

A friend texted me out of the blue.

I’m reading so-and-so’s book and it sounds just like you. Did you write it?

Ah, actually I had, but I didn’t share that legally-locked fact. Instead, I paused, exhaled and realized my voice was starting to leak through.

Starting to spill onto the pages of ghosted work for others. While not wrong, that’s not been my professional word-way.

Therefore, it was time to tap in, to listen.

When a ten-month book project for a much-loved, long-passed public figure was shelved instead of published—because the family sobbingly shared my word-work was too good.

Too true to their loved-one.
Too personal.
Too much to offer the fans—at least right now.

I realized a break was needed before I literally did—break.

The publication date of a book has always been my release date.

My bye-bye-bye moment—shared with both JOY and pride.

And without that moment, something was lost, twisted, torn.

After nearly thirty years of writing professionally—successfully—for others, telling their story, I realized it was time to sink into my own words.

I reached a moment where the writing for others still worked, but something in me didn’t.

A switch had flipped in me—it was time to stop getting lost in everyone else’s story and instead shift the focus to my own.

I have always been a writer.

And yet it hit me that perhaps I could be of word-help in a new way—as myself, no longer the ghost behind another’s story.

That realization enveloped me when I opened the thirteenth email in just under two weeks from readers and students of my programs, and yet again read the words—

Jill, I just want to write.

This experiment began with a pattern I couldn’t ignore.

Email after email.
Message after message.
Writers saying some version of the same thing:

I just want to write.
And I want to get paid.
And I don’t want to disappear to do it.
I don’t want to have to dance monkey, dance.

So many believe it isn’t possible—to just write, to not perform, to make a decent—delicious, even—living from their words.

To be seen, read, valued.

And that’s when the idea took root like a character-centered story I just had to write—

a reckoning, a return . . .

I used to write I am a writer at the top of every-single-page when I kept my first diary.

I had mastered writing for others.
I had mastered disappearing inside other voices.
I had mastered making words behave.

What I hadn’t mastered was staying visible inside my own.

Before First Light is my answer to that reckoning.

As me.

No longer the ghost(writer).
No longer hiding in plain sight behind pseudonyms.

The quiet author of more than 100 titles—some for myself, most for others, many on bestseller lists.

Not a reinvention.
A return.

A decision to write in public as myself, to build a sustainable word-life rooted in truth, structure, and JOY—without urgency, without performance, without pretending I have it all figured out.

This is not a polished after-story.

It’s the living one.

I’ve always been a quiet creator, a writer.

Even when I didn’t read until age nine and couldn’t fully comprehend until my first novel at eleven.

A very inappropriate title I picked up behind my pseudo mom after she finished the last page—with a tear and a sigh.

At seventeen I submitted a story to a leading men’s magazine and—yes—lied about my age in order for it to be published. (I’m finally releasing that guilt thirty years later.)

At eighteen my first novel was published under a pseudonym. A story that wildly mirrors my life now.

In my early twenties, my rented apartment had a dedicated wall papered with rejection letters—but still I wrote.

And at one point, I reluctantly signed on with an agent who put my words front and center. (Yes, there’s a story there.)

Before thirty, I started ghosting for some highly successful people.

Naturopathic doctors, red carpet walkers some people call stars, and ordinary people with extraordinary stories to tell.

Millions of copies sold—none with my name.

And I love it.
The prolific purple penning of tales for others, stories for me.
The hiding in plain sight.

It got me to my most delicious now . . .
a life some might call enchanted.

Where I live on a remote, tropical island in the middle of an endless blue-green sea.

A little cottage surrounded by secret gardens, overlooking the sea—where I sit and write all day . . .

A place where I rescue baby goats and other creatures while enJOYing daily sunrises—after I’ve purple penned my pre-dawn words.

There’s even a Frenchman who keeps me sane—or maybe slightly insane, for he knows how to push all my buttons.

It’s probably a saving grace we enJOY a long-distance marriage-affair.

Which leads me to my next magnetic chapter.

A shedding of the ghost and an honoring of stories I now want to write.

And it all begins Before First Light.

The experiment.

This is a rebuilding of a creative life in real time.

My creative life.

Part memoir, part business experiment, this is me putting it all on the word-line—publicly, profoundly.

Either way, I’m committing to a word-experiment for the next 52 weeks.

What if I conducted an experiment, live and in real time—one month, maybe twelve—to see what happens when I rebuild a writing life from scratch?

And document it.

What’s possible one year from now?

So I’m doing something a little crazy.

I’m calling it Between My Sheets—a Friday word-drop experiment.

This is me inviting you to read along and—in real time—witness me finding my word-footing, sharing my voice, and writing my way into the sunlight.

And finally giving my Before First Light words a place in the world and a path to being read.

This is me writing a book in real time—a living memoir that meets creative business experiment.

And this is your invitation to join the journey.

After nearly three decades of writing successfully as a ghost—I’m shedding that identity and stepping into my slice of sunlight.

Not in hindsight.
Not after it’s tidy.
As it unfolds.

These are the words written Before First Light . . . and released as a year-long episodic experiment, called

Between My Sheets

(Word-sheets, that is.)

Each Friday’s share builds on the one before it.

You can drop in anywhere, but this is a living story with momentum—questions asked, choices made, consequences lived.

It makes sense in order because life does. Or does it?

This is me responding—not by teaching a formula, but by doing it publicly, in my way.

Writing while living the journey.

What you’ll see here is the documentation of that attempt:
the writing, the doubt, the recalibration, the relaunching of a visible life as a writer.

And for me, that right there, is wildly uncomfortable.
And therefore, exactly the right next step on my word-path.

So consider joining me and witnessing the rebuilding of a writer’s world while in the messy middle of midlife.

Some of that conversation lives in public.
Some of it goes deeper in paid spaces.

That’s intentional.

I’m showing my word-work because I want to see—honestly—what’s possible one year from now when I choose to write as myself and let the words find their own path into the world.

But even more importantly, I want others—writers, creatives—to see what’s possible if they word-commit themselves.

If that’s you, welcome.
If you’re simply intrigued by the idea, welcome.

This is the journey.

This is your personal invitation to read along.

I recommend you start with Between My Sheets: The Prelude—
as this is how it all began.

I’m holding my word-door open in complete welcome.

Come on inside.

And when you know you want to stay awhile, you can Subscribe to Before First Light.