Song of Hummingbird Highway follows a wounded woman who journeys from Michigan to Belize, where myth, music, and motherhood force her to discover her own strength and truth. what was the inspiration for the setup of your story.

The inspiration connects to the universal arc of pain to empowerment—an evolution I’ve lived and continue learning. I carried physical and emotional wounds for years, clinging to resentment like pennies in a purse, their weight familiar, even comforting. Then I understood what Nelson Mandela meant: “Resentment is like taking poison and hoping your enemy will fall.” It serves no purpose except to weaken resolve.

For an instant, I considered writing a memoir, but fiction became my canvas—a space where my characters could teach me what I needed to understand about releasing what no longer serves us. Terri’s journey from pain to empowerment unfolds through learning to trust her own strength and believe in authentic connections that tell a story. Redemption isn’t dramatic; it’s simply making better choices about viewing the challenges we face.

I’d traveled to Belize years earlier and felt something shift when I heard Garifuna drums for the first time—not a soundbank from a midi drum machine, but the real thing, played by people for whom rhythm is prayer. Those drums stayed with me for decades, insisting I tell this particular story about a woman who needed what I’d discovered: that transformation requires stepping into unfamiliar territory where we can finally hear ourselves clearly.

What drives the story’s heart: myth, music, and motherhood aren’t manufactured calculations—they’re driven by the human pulse. I wanted to create something structurally innovative—a novel where 100+ carefully curated songs aren’t just soundtrack but architecture, where each of 30 chapters opens with original black-and-white photography that functions as visual meditation. Musical notes paint pictures in our hearts, creating immersive experiences that bridge the gap between what we feel inside and what we can express.

Like the authentic connections I nurture with people I meet, Terri’s journey mirrors that search for genuine resonance. The drums of Belize don’t just provide a soundtrack; they become a language for emotions she’s kept locked away, each note a key turning in a rusted lock. The setup pairs internal wounds with external displacement—Michigan represents everything familiar but confining, while Belize offers spiritual traditions and sacred spaces that don’t require her to be anyone she’s been before.

Terri longs to be truly seen, yet struggles to trust herself. What drew you to that emotional tension?

That tension between visibility and trust fascinates me because it’s fundamentally incongruous—we can’t be truly seen until we trust ourselves enough to show what’s real, but we can’t build that trust without being witnessed. It’s a cyclic sequence most of us repeat unless we reframe our perspective.

I rarely think about my childhood—instead, I feel like I was plopped into adult life at seventeen. Like Terri pointing at the Caribbean on a map, I picked Long Beach, California with five hundred dollars in my pocket and the dreams of writing a book someday. That early leap taught me about the courage it takes to follow your heart before you fully trust it.

For a long time, I allowed others to judge me, steer me, always trying to change myself to please them. It took me years to gain the confidence to listen to my own heart, to love myself, to function from a place of strength rather than constant accommodation. I wanted to write a character who couldn’t articulate her own desires because she’d spent so long performing. Terri knows something is missing, but she doesn’t have language for the absence.

That’s where music becomes essential to the narrative structure. The 100+ songs curated throughout the novel speak what Terri cannot yet say aloud. Strength is ours to keep or give away—we choose whether to take responsibility for our own choices or hand that authority to someone else. We all own our power, like choosing which song to play after a hard day.

The technical challenge was showing Terri’s evolution without spelling it out, trusting readers to recognize the shifts. Early chapters include songs about escape and longing. Later, the music transforms, becomes grounded, rooted, rhythmic rather than melodic. The music evolves with Terri becoming the language she finally trusts.

Writing this book in the early mornings and weekends over three years, some mornings Terri refused to cooperate. She’d make choices I hadn’t planned, reveal vulnerabilities I found uncomfortable. That’s when I knew I was writing someone real—someone wrestling with the same question I was: What is my truth? Terri’s quest taught me that we get to decide which melody defines our lives.

Ancestral voices, Mayan cosmology, and ritual appear through the book. How did you research and approach these traditions with care?

Throughout my life, I’ve been drawn to spiritual texts like a compass needle finding north—the Bible, The Four Agreements, The Power of Attraction, Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer. As a young adult, I fell in love with Caribbean folklore, particularly the stories of Anansi the spider. He’s not so different from Brer Rabbit and that’s when I understood: I’d rather focus on what we share than what divides us.

I deeply love and respect the Belizean people who welcomed me into their homes and lives, who shared the beautiful, intricate aspects of their culture. I traveled to Belize grieving and felt something shift when an elder from Hopkins shared his wisdom of the earth, the plants, the ancestors. I heard Garifuna drum rhythms that stayed with me, insisting I tell this story.

When I approached the magical realism sections, I researched meticulously, anchoring fictional possibilities in documented truth and fact. The story required three years of cultural research with Mesha Steele, a Belizean-born cultural consultant, songwriter and music educator, because I strove to capture a glimpse of the depth of Belizean spiritual traditions, as anchors and beauty, not as decorative elements.

At the book’s end, there’s a bibliography and references section that I insisted on, even though my publisher said fiction doesn’t require one. I wanted readers to know I respected these cultures enough to attempt to truly understand the complexities of this diaspora, I categorized 245 references by cultural elements, images, poems, lullabies, books, hymns, songs and television shows.

Cheryl L. Figueroa-Noralez, president and founder of Garifuna-American Heritage Foundation United,  read my book cover to cover and caught inaccuracies that needed to be revised. Those corrections mattered more than any other editorial feedback because they protected the integrity of communities that trusted me with their stories.

I walked everywhere with a pen and notepad, talking to people, really hearing their stories—not just waiting for my turn to speak, but listening to the rhythm beneath their words. The characters developed and grew the same way I did while writing: by paying attention to voices that have been singing long before we arrived.

What do you hope lingers with readers after the final page?

Hummingbirds represent optimism and hope, their wings beating seventy times per second, creating a hum that sounds like possibility itself. But Song of Hummingbird Highway doesn’t offer neat resolutions because transformation rarely works that way. Instead, I hope readers will sit with discomfort: What would it cost to walk away from everything familiar? Can we trust our own hearts when they lead us somewhere terrifying?

While writing, I spent time with all of my characters—loving them, painting their strengths as well as their flaws. Nothing is black or white in this story. I saw each character as both champion and victim in their own ways, making choices that felt right in the moment even when those choices caused harm. I love that complexity that makes us human.

What I hope lingers is the music and the art. The songs embedded in chapters create an accompaniment that extends beyond the page. A soundtrack not driven by algorithm, but by heart. Music that transcends eras, encouraging readers to replay scenes in their minds with their own emotional rhythm attached. Drums and funky beats speak what words alone cannot, building bridges between us—much like the 30 photographs that open each chapter, visual meditations in black and white rag paper, revealing conviction about our innate wisdom, and the imagery of nature revealing who we are and who we’re becoming.

I dream that in a hundred years, someone could pick up Song of Hummingbird Highway and walk alongside Terri as she discovers something essential about herself in the most unexpected places. That they’ll understand the courage to step into unfamiliar territory and listen to what they find there.

The words that capture this story are journey, connection, truth. Not destinations, but the path we take. Not easy answers, but genuine curiosity, questions we’re brave enough to ask ourselves.

Always ending with my signature question: Are you creating?

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