About

You know that feeling—the one where everything looks right on paper, but something inside you keeps whispering: this isn’t it?

I’m Cheyenne Richards, and I'm so grateful I trusted that whisper. It led me to write novels about a woman who trusted it a century and a half before me—and to share the raw, real story of what’s happening as I trust mine. Right now, that story involves working my way slowly around the world on a 45-foot sailboat.

A few years ago, I was a marketing executive in California. I’d helped take a company public, owned a house, built the life you’re supposed to want. And every morning I woke up feeling like I was living someone else’s dream.

So I sold everything, moved aboard a boat, and started writing.

It wasn’t graceful. But somewhere between learning to troubleshoot a diesel engine and finishing my first manuscript in a rolling anchorage at 3 a.m., I stopped running from my old life and started sailing toward a new one.

The Books

I write about women who chose the sea. The first one found me on San Francisco Bay.

I first heard of Eleanor “Ellen” Creesy in 2013—while I was covered in spray and white-knuckling the tiller of a J24 in twenty-two knots. My sailing instructor learned I was a writer and said, “Oh, have I got a story for you.”

Did I know about the woman who navigated the Flying Cloud—the fastest clipper ship in history? Who, with her captain-husband, set a record in 1851 that lasted 135 years?

In the Victorian era, when ‘charming conversation’ was considered the height of female achievement, I didn’t even think such a thing was possible. But I filed Ellen away as a fascinating historical tidbit. Over the next several years, sailing took over my life, and my husband and I went cruising in Mexico.

Then, three days before we were set to cross our first ocean, Covid closed the Pacific.

We sailed home. Sold the boat. And for a long while, the only way I could get back to sea was in my imagination.

That’s when Ellen resurfaced, and I set out to write her story. But I’d lived the life myself. I’d navigated both a boat—and a marriage—under challenging conditions. And I found myself asking a different question about Ellen than the historians had. Not just how did she do it, but how did she do it with him? How did she chase the life she wanted without losing the person she loved?

The Navigator Series became more than historical fiction. It became a reckoning with the tension so many women still carry—between nurturing others and feeding their own soul, between independence and partnership, ambition and acceptance. Ellen’s story gave me both a language for that struggle, and a vision for transcending it—a sweeping maritime adventure, but also a love story.

In the process, I learned to my great delight that Ellen is the first of many. History is full of women who chose the sea and were forgotten—pirates, navigators, captains, explorers—and one by one, I want to tell their stories.

Also in my catalog is my debut novel, The Prisoner’s Apprentice—an award-winning historical psychological thriller based on the true story of a 19th-century serial killer—who happens to be my great-great-grand-uncle.

The Journey

But I’m not just writing about a woman who sailed into the unknown. I’m doing it myself. Again.

My husband and I weren’t done with the sea, so we bought a new sailboat and right now are cruising the coast of Europe in a 45-footer named Pristine. If all goes well, we hope to slowly make our way around the world.

Along the way, I send monthly letters—honest personal essays about what this life actually looks like. They’re not polished. They’re real. And they seem to reach the people who are wrestling with their own version of this isn’t quite it.

Because I’ll be honest—there are plenty of days where I'm afraid I'm nowhere near as strong as my dreams are. Ellen Creesy may have been a verified badass, but I’m not my heroine. I’m just a midlife woman who didn’t learn to sail until her 40s, is a wuss about cold weather, and still gets impostor syndrome every time someone watches me board my expedition-looking sailboat.

But living a life in alignment with my values? Attempting to take another step closer to my dreams? Nothing I’ve done in my life has felt as meaningful. And writing Ellen’s story continues to loan me the courage I need to tackle each day’s challenges.

Your version of this isn’t it probably looks nothing like mine. That’s exactly the point.

The Call to Adventure

If something in you is restless—if you love a great story, or you’re curious what happens when a woman actually goes after the life she wants—then this is your invitation.

📬 Join the crew, and I'll send you the first book The Navigator Series for free, plus three exclusive bonuses as you read. Includes monthly letters from wherever I am in the world. Unsubscribe anytime.