After years of working in fashion, the Psychology graduate drew on her educational background and inspiration from living in New York City to write her debut novel, Portrait of a Haunting. Now, her book is hitting bookshelves just in time for Halloween.
When Madison Tyler Nelson ‘17 moved to New York after graduating from York College of Pennsylvania, she found herself enthralled by the big city and the many opportunities it presented her. Nelson immediately threw herself into marketing roles in the fashion industry, culminating in her role as Senior Manager of Marketing Operations at Tory Burch.
However, what truly caught her attention were the many strange happenings she encountered from 10 years of riding the subway and walking the busy streets of New York City. Seeing New Yorkers accustomed to such encounters occasionally made Nelson question whether what she saw was real. One day, her imagination challenged her: “What if it was a ghost? What would I do?”
That idea served as the inspiration for Nelson’s debut novel, Portrait of a Haunting, which follows a woman gifted with a haunting ability to see ghosts. The book is now being published by Penguin Random House through their Berkley imprint and is available to purchase as of October 6, 2026.
Nelson is very excited to share her novel with the public, a dream that she has carried with her for many years since her college days. And now, she hopes to inspire other writers through her experiences and how they have allowed her to find success not only in the publishing industry but also in her career.
An Understanding of People
A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Nelson decided to attend York College after receiving her acceptance letter. Her high school ran an Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program, which prepares kids for college by teaching them about scholarships and providing engaging learning experiences.
During her senior year of the program, Nelson learned that one of her teachers was an alumnus of the College. As part of the program, teachers could take juniors and seniors to local colleges and give them tours. Her teacher took her to York College, which she found to be a wonderful campus with a respectable distance from her home. She had a gut feeling that this would be the perfect fit for her and committed to the College upon her return.
By the end of her first semester, Nelson had settled on becoming a Psychology major because of its applicability across many fields she was interested in.
“I had always had a fascination with Psychology, and I knew that you could take it, not just into being a therapist and a psychiatrist, but also into marketing and business, and use it for a bunch of different things,” said Nelson.
She had many great experiences in the Psychology department and beyond campus in the downtown area of York City. She even became a member of Delta Phi Epsilon, a sorority on campus, and met many of her closest friends through Greek Life, including her husband.
Nelson had also grown up with an interest in writing. Initially, she hesitated to declare herself an English-related major, wanting to focus on her studies and the jobs she held. However, when she needed to take an elective course in her senior year of college, she decided to try a creative writing course.
One of her assignments was to submit something for class critique, and Nelson decided to turn in a past piece.
“I turned in something that I had written years prior,” she said. “The whole class and the teacher were so receptive to it, and they said such beautiful things that I remembered how much I love writing and why I wanted to do it and that I was good at it.”
Nelson left that class believing she could finally take her writing seriously again. It wasn’t long before she began fleshing out ideas for stories and crafting ideas for potential novels while she began her career journey.
Making a Name in Marketing and Fashion
After graduating from York College, Nelson moved with her husband (then boyfriend) to his home state of New York. While job hunting there, she worked at a nonprofit for about eight months, then moved to a marketing agency focused on TV and movie work.
Nelson found herself gravitating toward marketing work as she gained more experience. Ever since her days helping to manage a Zumiez during high school and college, she built up strong leadership and organizational skills. She loved being able to use those skills when interacting with customers and marketing products for sale, which assisted her in her career.
Eventually, she shifted her attention to the fashion industry, an interest she’d had since college.
“I’ve always really loved style,” Nelson said. “I’m a very artistic person, and I took a lot of fashion marketing courses just for fun while I was at York [College].”
Eventually, she decided to see how her marketing skills could translate into fashion work. It led to her spending three and a half years at Calvin Klein, where she worked in its project management and operations department. Later, she became a Senior Manager of Marketing Operations at Tory Burch, where she has remained for the past five years.
“Once I found myself there, I knew, ‘This is a place where I can have a salary and do a job that pays the bills, but also feel stimulated the whole time,’” she said. “It’s not something that makes me feel bored or burned out, which was also really important to me. I just want to do something that I enjoy, especially if I have to do it every day.”
It was during her time at Calvin Klein and Tory Burch that Nelson felt confident and steady enough in her career and financial situation to start pursuing her dream of writing. Being in New York City provided her with plenty of inspiration, and that quickly evolved into a goal of publishing a novel.
Portrait of a Haunting
Nelson’s debut novel, Portrait of a Haunting, follows a young woman named Tatum Alexander with a terrifying ability to see spirits, which she inherited from her mother. Tatum believed her whole life her mother lost her mind because of their shared ability, until one night, she comes home and finds her best friend murdered and the crime eerily connected to the one her mother committed years ago. She must solve not only the murder of her friend, but also learn the truth behind her mother’s actions from years ago and her haunting ability.
The novel is a blend of several of Nelson’s favorite genres, including horror, thriller/mystery, and bits of fantasy. She aims for the eerie story to leave readers questioning the supernatural and perhaps open their eyes to the small things in life that might have a spookier origin.
“My intention when writing it was, because it is set in New York City, I wanted the reader to finish it and wonder if it was real,” Nelson said. “I wanted them to ask, ‘Did that happen? Do those things exist?’ I wanted them to question reality a little bit, so it’s very set in our modern world, but with some speculative twists.”
She also hopes that her readers will have fun with the story. Her favorite books have always been those that evoke a wide range of emotions, so she wants to ensure that the story she tells carries those same notes. All while having a meaning that she hopes her readers will resonate with.
“But the biggest theme of the novel is that we are not necessarily where we come from,” Nelson said. “We’re more than just our past or more than the things that haunt us. A big part of the book is the main character learning that what she thought her past looked like is not necessarily true, and that it didn’t need to define her for as long as it did, and I think that’s true for a lot of us.”
“We get caught up in where we come from, or what we’ve been through, and it can really hold us down and keep us in a dark place if we let it,” she continued. “But if you believe in yourself and you push through a little bit, you can pretty much achieve anything that you want. You just have to really, really, push through.”
The Publishing Process
Portrait of a Haunting wasn’t the first novel Nelson had been working on. From 2020 to 2024, she had been working on several potential books while sending out query letters, which is when a writer sends their book pitch and proposal to potential literary agents to represent them. When she got stuck on one book idea, Nelson would shelve it and move on to the next.
She loved all her book ideas, but Nelson expressed how excited she was as she started writing Portrait of a Haunting in May 2023. It was the one idea she had that sparked her creative energy the fastest, and she knew she had to share it.
“I remember when I was editing it and getting ready to send it to agents, I knew this was going to be the one that gets me published,” she said. “I just had a feeling.”
It was finally during a writer’s retreat in Scotland in October 2024 that Nelson, surrounded by many of her writer friends, received a message from a friend who referred her to her own agent to check her email. The agent loved the story and made her an offer. After notifying her of the other agents who had her work, she received three more offers and eventually chose one to represent her.
She spent much of early 2025 looking for an editor for her book and then a publisher. By March 2025, Nelson had received a call from Penguin Random House’s imprint, Berkley, and was offered a pre-empt to buy the book.
It still feels surreal to Nelson, even now, that her book is available to the public. This experience had been a dream of hers since she was young, and now, after many years of hard work, she has reached her goal of getting published.
“I feel very grateful, and it also very much feels like it was always meant to be,” Nelson said. “It feels like this is exactly what I was meant to be doing, and reality has finally come to fully shape in front of me.”
Community and Confidence
Looking back on everything she has accomplished, Nelson credits York College with providing a solid foundation of knowledge and skills that she frequently uses in both her writing and her daytime job. Especially when it comes to understanding the people she both writes and works with, her studies in psychology have set her up for success.
“I think the Psychology degree that I received taught me a lot about critical thinking and putting myself in somebody else’s shoes,” Nelson said. “But it also gave me a big leg up in understanding people and their motives and their behaviors and their intentions, which helped me, especially in writing, craft incredibly strong character work. That’s all my psych degree.”
Even now, Nelson plans to continue using those skills for her next goal: publishing her next novel. When she sold Portrait of a Haunting, it was done as a two-book deal. She has already been working on her second book since January 2026, which will fall into the same genres as her first, and will most likely reach bookstore shelves in early 2028.
At the same time, she will be on a book tour for Portrait of a Haunting, visiting bookstores in Baltimore, Pennsylvania, and New York. She is looking forward to meeting readers and connecting with her audience, especially since the locations are close to where she grew up, went to college, and now lives.
“When you’re a debut writer, you don’t necessarily have a fully-formed audience yet,” Nelson said. “So it’s your responsibility to find that audience, and that’s my goal. If I can find my audience, then I did what I’m supposed to do.”
Nelson emphasized that, as a writer, one of the most important pieces of advice she could give was to find other writers to support her. Dealing with rejections alone can be hard, but a community of friends and peers who understand the passion and struggles of writing and publishing, and who encourage you to keep going, can make a world of difference.
“For the first three years of my querying and writing journey, I did it mainly on my own,” she said. “It wasn’t until I joined a writer’s workshop and I became an alumnus of that workshop that I made a ton of writer friends who are some of my very best friends even now.”
Learning to be your own champion is another crucial skill in Nelson’s mind. Writers face countless obstacles on their path to writing and publishing their work. As long as they never give up and remember that they are never alone, they will find success and bring their stories to life.
“So long as you just keep showing up for yourself and doing the work and reading and learning, you’ll eventually get there,” she said. “The only difference between people who make it as a writer and those who may not is perseverance. It’s just about keep moving, keep trying. When you hear no, just hear not yet. You’ve just got to keep going.”
Be sure to visit Nelson when she comes to Bound Books in York, Pennsylvania, on October 6, 2026, during her book tour. To order a copy of Portrait of a Haunting, visit the Penguin Random House website for more details.
