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The Stories

Five complete stories. Another on the way.

The Invitation. New Mercies. Along the Road. Held Together. The Late Arrivals. Five stories are written and waiting. A sixth is still finding its ending.

Each story is written to stand on its own and will be released individually, with collected editions to follow. They’re on their way.

Who lives here

The Wumblés. The Llamador.
And whoever arrives next.

The Wumblés

Rounded. Fuzzy. Glowing from within. They blaze when they laugh — like a star and a half. They help not because you deserve it, but because that is simply who they are.

The Llamador

The one who calls. Every evening he lifts his old guitarra and the notes float through every path, every tree, every drop of dew. His silence is the first sign something is deeply wrong.

The Escribor of Laws

Old. Respected. Warm but not sentimental. He wrote the rules not to keep people out — but to hold the spirit of the table. When he is present, the rules serve people. When he is absent, they become walls. He shuffles out in his robe and slippers, corrects everything with one gesture, and says eight words. That is enough.

The Orejans

Smooth. Wide-eyed. Defined by their very large ears, which lead them toward sound, music, warmth, and belonging. They wander because they wonder. They arrived at Pueblo de Luz not because they were invited — but because their ears heard the Llamador's song from three valleys away and followed it. They come with open hands.

The Praxon

Tall. Angular. Sharply tailored and sharper still in his conclusions. He carries a rolled document like a credential nobody requested. He believes the rules protect the table. He simply cannot see what they cost — until something forces him to look.

The Escuchamos Fruit

Golden-amber. Sun-warm. Dense flesh around one large seed, best eaten slowly or roasted until the edges darken. It grows on the ancient trees that make the hillside glow. Everyone brings it to the table. To offer one is to say: sit down. There is enough.

Bill Page · J.P. Ivie

I have spent most of my life starting over.

Military family. New schools, new faces, new rules nobody explained. I learned early what it feels like to stand just outside a room where everyone else already belongs to each other. You watch. You wait. You try to find the door.

That experience left a mark I didn't fully understand until much later. But it shaped everything.

It shaped how I notice people. Who's new. Who doesn't know the unwritten rules. Who feels unsafe asking questions. It shaped how I work — twenty-plus years in design and communications, helping organizations say what they mean and reach the people they care about, without leaving anyone behind in the process. It shaped the stories I tell, the worlds I build, the table I keep trying to set a little wider.

I grew up with strong convictions — about faith, about order, about how things were supposed to work. Some of those convictions were true. Some of them were just comfortable. And over time I stopped being able to tell the difference.

So I started listening. I learned Spanish. I read history I had never been taught. I sat with stories that didn't line up with what I thought I knew. And slowly, carefully, and at some real personal cost, I changed.

I'm not finished changing. I probably never will be.

What I do now — the consulting, the writing, the fiction, the bilingual work — it all comes from the same place. I do for others what I wanted someone to do for me, in the rooms where I was new and didn't know how to find my footing. I try to solve problems with honesty instead of performance. I try to make complicated things simple, and simple things true.

I've had some hard seasons. Lost things I expected to keep. Carried more quietly than I probably should have. But I keep coming back to this work because it isn't really about me. It's about the person standing just outside the room, wondering if there's a place for them.

There is. That's what I've been trying to say, in every form I know how to say it.

Where I do my best work

Most teams don't call when things are going well.

They call when something isn't moving. When the meetings keep happening but nothing gets decided. When the message isn't landing and nobody can agree on why. When the work is good but the people doing it are pulling in different directions.

That moment — stuck, unclear, a little frustrated — is exactly where I do my best work.

I've spent twenty years walking into those situations. Corporate teams at Fortune 100 companies. Small businesses trying to find their voice. Faith communities that care deeply but can't quite communicate it. Nonprofits doing meaningful work that nobody outside the building seems to understand.

The problems look different. The feeling is the same. It's the moment something needs to move and isn't.

The toolkit

The credentials are real. The toolkit is earned.

Twenty years of practice. A UX certification and a Master UX certification from the Nielsen Norman Group — the most respected credentialing body in the field. Deep, working fluency in human-centered design, user research and synthesis, workshop facilitation, design systems, Figma, information architecture, agile methods, mentorship, team leadership, and the integration of AI into the design process.

If you want to go twelve rounds on methodology, I'm ready.

But here's what I've learned after two decades of doing this work at the highest level:

The tools are not the point.

Figma doesn't get teams unstuck. Research decks don't move organizations forward. Certifications don't build trust across a room full of people who can't agree on the problem.

People do that. The right person, in the right room, asking the right questions — that's what changes things.

These tools are just tools. The goal is getting unstuck, moving forward, solving the problem, making progress, working together. Not more tool usage.

How I can help

Every engagement starts with a conversation.

Not a proposal. Not a pitch. Here's what that conversation might turn into.

Work at the Table

What the work actually looks like.

Every engagement starts the same way — with questions, not answers. What follows is what happened when organizations trusted that process.