my story

2009

I was fresh out of Art School with a brand new degree…

The trunk of my car was crammed with abstract oil paintings and journals filled with not-yet-published writing.

I had no plan, no direction, just a passion to make art.

I was the first college graduate in my family and it felt like a huge achievement, but also a little unnecessary. (After all, everyone in my family had made do without a degree at all.)

I didn’t know exactly what to do with my life yet, so I did what any antsy 20-something does in that situation…

I packed my bags and and went to Europe in search of myself!

Alone with no money, I beelined it to Prague, where I fell madly in love with ancient architecture, art history, and relics of the Old World.

When I came back to the States, I applied for jobs in art museums across the country and made it my life’s mission to write about art I loved.

Soon after, I took a staff writing gig at a startup online news publication where I published loads of weekly articles on Art & Culture. It was the first time I’d ever been paid to write…. and the first time an editor told me that I was a good writer.

Me on the right during an artist lecture, Fisk University

When the news site folded a few months later, my writing helped me land a job at an art museum.

It was a small but mighty museum at Fisk University and I was a one-woman marketing department. I cut my teeth in copywriting, producing ads, press releases, exhibition catalogs, email campaigns, website copy, you name it.

Plus, I got to meet incredible artists and work with one of the most important art collections of Modern Art in the country.

It was a dream.

The term “side hustle” wasn’t in my vocabulary in these days, but that’s exactly what I started doing.

While I was working at the art museum, I started an art & design blog with my friend Kelly called The Spotted Fox. This was my first business.

We published weekly blog posts that got featured on Design Sponge, Apartment Therapy, and other major sites.

I sold drawings and art prints through the blog and at art festivals and street fairs. This is when I learned the ins-and-outs of sales copy, content marketing and social media marketing…

Giveaways, cross-promotions, newsletters, guest posts, and most important: CONSISTENT weekly content.

The next year, I set my sights on opening my own art gallery.

So I partnered with friend and artist Dane Carder to launch a contemporary gallery called Threesquared in Nashville’s Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood.

This was Business #2.

It was also another fun marketing adventure for me. I did the copywriting and developed all marketing assets like our poppin’ website, promo materials, email marketing, social media posts, and PR campaigns for each show.

We ran the gallery successfully for 3 years, curating exciting new shows each month and developing an irreplaceable arts culture in that neighborhood...

When we started, only a handful of people showed up our openings, by the time we closed our doors to pursue new ventures, there were dozens of new art galleries popping up around us and we’d helped established a First Saturday Art Crawl that brought in 100s of people each month.

I became the Senior Art & Culture Writer for The Tennessean.

This felt like a major step up in my writing career since it was a “serious” newspaper.

Prior to that, I’d been publishing my writing in The Nashville Scene (an alt weekly), niche art magazines, and online publications.

While at The Tennessean, I wrote weekly articles (in print and online) covering art & culture in Nashville and surrounding areas.

I worked on short deadlines with a large editorial team and seriously sharpened my writing skills. Each story had to be tight, direct, and easy to read.

It was a remote gig, and I figured: why not leverage my time?

So I went to work part time for a hot new contemporary art space called David Lusk Gallery.

Putting my marketing skills to work, I became the lead copywriter. I created press releases, social media posts, catalogue essays, art descriptions, email campaigns, artist bios, and ad copy. And when guests would walked in the door, it was time to sell art.

I quickly learned to power of storytelling, how to reframe what “value” means for each individual buyer, and how to sell an investment.

It worked. And I had a lot of fun doing it!

THEN… A FASCINATING TURN OF EVENTS…

I became a private investigator.

Huh?

A former friend and Tennessean colleague recruited me to join a small, all-female, private investigation agency called AK Investigations.

I don’t know about you, but that’s not something you just turn down.

So I took the job!

And thus began my 6-year journey into the world of courtrooms, legalese, and criminal defense teams.

The Bitter Southerner published my long-form non-fiction story, Good Luck, Morons. “A remarkable story about this insane 100-mile race through the East Tennessee mountains — and about the man behind it, a mysterious character named Lazarus Lake.”

It quickly became a fan favorite.

Audm released a 38-minute audio version of the story narrated by the amazing (and British!) Simon Vance.

“Good Luck, Morons” was included in The Bitter Southerner’s “Best of 2017” collection and was reprinted in full in Creative Loafing and Wilderness.

Slate’s Hang Up and Listen podcast talked about it.

And it was later published in Bitter Southerner Reader Vol. 4.

Later that year, one of my short stories was published in The Los Angeles Review.

Five poems about my work as a private investigator were published in Waxing & Waning Issue 02.

Taught my first writing workshop at StudioNPL, called “Starting with the Sensory”. The workshop taught aspiring writers how to explore and depict the world through sensory details.

PODCAST LAUNCH

Launched a brand new podcast called Thick as Thieves on the We Own This Town podcast network.

Hosted by me and Veronica, another private investigator who has a background in art. We discussed art heists, forgeries, and all kinds of art crimes.

The show ran for 2 successful seasons in 2019 & 2020.

You can listen to it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or where ever you get your podcasts!

Every episode is also in a rad playlist on We Own This Town’s YouTube channel.

Beyond the podcast, my private investigation career was in full swing.

I was working on criminal cases in both state and federal court.

After my first capital trial experience in 2017, I decided to focus on mitigation and sentencing in death penalty cases. I spent my days uncovering my clients’ compelling life histories, contextualizing, and humanizing them to those who made decisions about their life and liberty.

Over the next several years, I trained extensively to became an expert in human behavior, desire, and motivation.

Why do people make the decisions they make?

What are the underlying motivations — and how can we make sense of them?

I interviewed 100s of people across the country— convicted killers, eye-witnesses, victim’s families. I analyzed countless psychological evaluations of people involved in the cases I was working.

Doing this work, I learned a great deal about the human condition, the reasons we act, and the reasons we don’t.

I left the world of private investigation to build my own business as a marketer and writer. My goal was to help as many people as possible through my work.

I studied with the best copywriters I could find day-in and day-out for months on end with the goal of becoming the very best copywriter out there.

I founded, Copy Tiger, a premium copywriting and marketing strategy agency.