Second Voice Press
Music.
Story.
People.
Fiction and nonfiction from a band director, educator, and storyteller. Because the people making the music matter even more than the notes on the page.
6
Published
4
Novels
2
Nonfiction
Second Voice Press
Fiction and nonfiction from a band director, educator, and storyteller. Because the people making the music matter even more than the notes on the page.
Nonfiction
Practical guides and honest preparation for music educators and students — written by someone who has lived this work from both sides of the podium.
Now Available
Nonfiction · Student Guide
What Students Think, What Actually Happens, and How to Succeed When It Counts
Built from surveys and candid conversations with collegiate faculty across the country, this is the honest preparation every aspiring music major deserves — and rarely gets. What does music school actually demand? What do professors wish students already knew? What does a sustainable career in music truly look like? Clear-eyed, compassionate, and essential reading before stepping onto any music school campus.
Published
Nonfiction · Band Directors
A Practical Guide to Diagnosing, Tuning, and Rebuilding Your Band Program
No one teaches you how to take apart a band program — and put it back together better. This is the book they never taught you in music ed. From culture and curriculum to recruitment, rehearsal strategy, marching band, scheduling, and burnout prevention, Under the Hood is a practical, personal guide to building a program that doesn't just run, but runs well. Includes a full appendix of tools, checklists, and reflection prompts free to copy and adapt.
Fiction · Latest Release
The Second Voice Series · Book Four (ongoing)
Book Four of an ongoing series.
In music, a fermata is a pause held longer than expected — a moment of stillness where sound lingers, breath gathers, and meaning deepens.
For Lena Grant, life has become one long fermata. As her family stands at the intersection of change and loss, Lena finds herself navigating grief that does not arrive all at once, but in quiet waves — between ordinary moments, unfinished conversations, and the spaces left behind by those she loves most. Her husband, Michael, moves through the world with steady devotion, anchoring their home even as uncertainty presses in from every direction. Their daughter, Cadence, carries her own hard-won wisdom, shaped by early trauma and a fierce commitment to honesty, stability, and chosen family.
Set against the intimate rhythms of domestic life, music education, and long-built community, Fermata is a novel about what it means to pause without breaking — to remain present when forward motion feels impossible. It explores the unseen labor of caretaking, the quiet negotiations of marriage, and the ways music becomes both refuge and language when words fall short.
Tender, lyrical, and deeply human, Fermata is a meditation on love that endures not because it is untouched by sorrow, but because it learns how to breathe within it.
Also in the Second Voice Series
Ongoing Series
An ongoing series set at a high school band program in small-town Pennsylvania — about music, loss, legacy, and the voices that linger long after the final note fades. Four books published, with more on the way.
Book One
A band director uncovers a forgotten story. A community begins to remember. The opening movement sets everything in motion with quiet tension and a manuscript that was never meant to be found.
PublishedBook Two
The story grows larger than anyone expected. Students step into a legacy. A new composer arrives. The tension builds — and the community must decide what it truly means to honor someone never properly heard.
PublishedBook Three
Chosen family, second chances, and a new voice finding its way home. The story deepens and opens — with more still to come.
PublishedBook Four
For Lena Grant, life has become one long fermata. A tender, lyrical novel about what it means to pause without breaking — and the love that learns to breathe within sorrow.
New ReleaseBooks Five – Eight
The Second Voice Series is an ongoing work. Additional volumes are planned — continuing the story of Franklin, its students, and the music that holds them together.
The Author
"Not everyone gets to be heard the first time.
Some voices need help to be heard at all."
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