By Dani Kreeft
From Dani Kreeft — writer based between Los Angeles and Calgary. A professional whose livelihood depends on finding the most precise, honest way to say a necessary thing, and who spent years living nomadically — moving internationally and internally — accumulating the 300 pieces that became this book. As she puts it: "I've always known that to write, I have to live. At least that was the only way to get any good blood out of me. I couldn't just sit at a desk and breathe prose. There had to be a point A to point B, some movement, whether internationally or internally, but always intentionally." Find her on Instagram @danikreeftwrites.
"Waves Come in Sets" is a nomadic memoir served in snackable vignettes: 300 pieces, each 1–2 pages, each self-contained, each born from a moment of genuine attention paid to something right in front of the writer. Not chapters. Not an arc with a destination. Individual captures — of a specific silence in a Sicilian church, a stranger's face in an LA diner, an internal tremor of existential wondering — that each land on the same revelation: life is only ever happening right here, right now, and the only way to meet it is to be present in the minute you're actually in.
The book can be read front to back on a long flight, or picked up and opened to any page to find something complete. Readers have described it as a perfect travel companion, a coffee-table book they return to in small doses, a bedside presence, and something that feels like sitting down to have a conversation with the writer every time they open it.
Kreeft's writing has been described by readers and fellow writers this way:
"You verbalize what we internalize. In a way, it breaks the contract of shame around a lot of things we don't talk about because it's uncomfortable — but a lot of the things you write about actually just describe the complexity of humanity." — Bex Billington
"You're able to digest the complexities of the environment around you and form a visual through words that lets me travel with you. You excavate hard terrain and crack open the earth so the rainwater can seep in." — Elizabeth McManus
Perfect for:
Readers of travel memoir and literary nonfiction who want something in short-form vignettes rather than a sustained narrative arc
-Fans of present-moment philosophy — Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks, Jenny Odell's How to Do Nothing, Cheryl Strayed's Tiny Beautiful Things — who want that quality of attention applied to the small, accidental, specific moments of daily life
-Anyone who travels frequently and wants a book calibrated to the attention span and receptivity of transit — 1–2 pages per entry means you can open it anywhere, read one piece, put it down, and carry something with you
-Gift buyers looking for something that reads as specific and alive rather than generic and inspirational — a book with a clear, original voice that feels like it was written by a human being who was genuinely awake while living
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