Professional weirdo.
TV writer. Story consultant. Screenwriting professor. Chronic migraine warrior. Canadian in Los Angeles. Still here.
I always identified as the Rhoda. Funny women like Catherine O’Hara and Andrea Martin being hilarious on SCTV, just 100 kilometers down the road from where I sat watching them, flooded my toddler brain with dopamine and gumption. That was it. Comedy was the whole plan.
In grade eight, I gave a speech to my entire school about sitcom spinoffs. Mainly of the 1970s. I was not playing around then either.
I was a smart, highly verbal kid from a giant working class family who figured I’d grow up to be a doctor or prime minister. Instead I disemboweled my Glo Worm so I could use its light to stay up past my bedtime reading Nancy Drew and Stephen King — and then spent the rest of my life making up stories about doctors and prime ministers and devoting myself to various forms of pretend.
First in my immediate family to earn a bachelor’s degree. First of my line to earn a master’s. I chose to do both in television, because loving that comforting blue glow wasn’t enough. I needed to make it rigorous.
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon won an Oscar for Good Will Hunting and my thought was immediate:
Well. I could do that.
I know. I know.
But that’s how it starts, right? One specific moment where the dream stops being abstract and becomes something you can actually point at. The work has been serious and sustained ever since. Through layoffs, underemployment, economic collapse, the death of my mother, a global pandemic, and an industry that has spent twenty years restructuring itself away from accessibility.
Not stopping.
Not giving up.
The industry has been telling me I’m close for a long time.
Still here. Still writing. Still watching.
That sustained, serious engagement isn’t just backstory. It’s the source of my deepest empathy for writers doing the same thing. The cost is real. Financially, emotionally, physically. The war of attrition nature of this industry is real. And community is survival.
Here’s what all of this means if you’re thinking about working with me:
When I read your work, it’s not from some distant place of authority. It’s as someone who has lived inside this industry, studied it obsessively, taught it rigorously, and is still doing the work right alongside you. Still that writer. Still in the thick of it.
Not going to tell you what isn’t working without helping you figure out why. Not going to give you notes that flatten your voice or ignore your vision. And absolutely not going to pretend this industry is easier than it is — or harder than it needs to be.
What will happen is getting into it with you. Story problems, structural issues, emotional signal, dialogue, tone — whatever your script needs. With honesty, with specificity, and with genuine investment in your work.
Because that’s what I would have wanted.
That’s what I still want.
Los Angeles still feels slightly surreal after years of watching it from Canada. Chronic migraine disease has been part of the picture for most of my life — it’s taught me more about sustainability, pacing, and designing a life around what actually matters than any productivity system ever could. No hustling. No grinding. Just the work, done consistently and seriously, with the capacity to keep doing it protected at all costs.
Currently training at the Upright Citizens Brigade — after two decades of missed connections on both sides of the continent. New York barked out a laugh and kept it moving. Toronto (UCB inspired training there) said not all of it, not yet. Los Angeles kept moving the goalposts. The story of how long it took could be a Hallmark movie. With swears. And dick jokes.
Phases of my life get measured by the show that’s the touchstone at the time. Right now it’s Hacks. There are thoughts. (There are always thoughts.)
To sum up, I’m a chronically ill, Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based, TV-obsessed professional weirdo who has been doing this since Ben Affleck and Matt Damon made it seem possible.
Still think it is.
Wanna work together?
Whether you need a story editor, a script consultant, or just someone who will absolutely understand your feelings about streaming — I’m your gal.