ABOUT
Hi, I’m Cindy Estelle.
I’ve always written as if I were living it.
— Cindy
Not remembering it years later. Not standing safely on the shore. Living it — right there in the middle of the heartbreak, the hope, the terrible decisions, and the moments that change everything.
Maybe that’s why I’ve spent so much of my life wanting to meet my characters. Some of them feel like old friends. Some feel like warnings. A few would absolutely ruin my life, and if I’m being honest, I’d probably invite them to dinner anyway.
I write stories that are real, raw, emotionally messy, and unapologetically human. Most of my books happen in the now. My characters aren’t looking back on the lives they’ve lived. They’re trying to survive the lives they’re living.
For more than ten years, Back Burner sat untouched on a little pink laptop.
Ten years.
One day I realized I was more afraid of leaving my stories unread than I was of sharing them. I promised myself I wouldn’t let another year pass with my books trapped in a folder somewhere, waiting for permission.
So here we are.
I’m proudly and completely indie. Every book, every upload, every lesson learned the hard way. I do this myself because these stories matter to me, and I want them out in the world.
Romance will always be my first love. I adore writing characters who find each other, lose each other, choose each other, and occasionally drive each other completely insane. But seasons change. Writers change. Lately, I’ve found myself drawn toward stories with sharper edges and heavier consequences — the kind that linger long after the last page.
A fair warning
I’m not your fairy bookmother.
I can’t promise you’ll get the ending you want.
Some of the best books stay with us because they gave us exactly what we needed. Some stay with us because they didn’t. Either way, I’m willing to take chances. I think stories should make us feel something, even when it hurts.
More than anything, I want to be your author friend. I want to hear from you. I want to celebrate the characters you love, mourn the ones you don’t recover from, and write stories you want, stories you need, and stories that remind you you’re not the only one figuring life out as you go.
And yes — before anyone says a word — I’ve been using the em dash since 2015, and unlike some of my characters, I have the receipts. Leave the em dash alone.
Speaking of em dashes — I edit, too. AI-friendly, judgment-free, indie-author owned.
Meet The Emdash Editor ↗I can’t promise glass slippers or perfect endings.
But I can promise stories that pull, twist, burn, and linger.
And if you leave my pages feeling something you can’t quite name — well, that’s the real magic. And hey, if the shoe fits.