A Breadcrumb Trail to the Heart: Getting Personal and Giving Back

People often want to know how much of myself I put into my books. This question always makes me nervous. If there’s a lot of me, is that cheating? Is it somehow gauche? Reading is such an intimate experience, and it can be a little terrifying to bare your soul on the page and then talk about it after. I know other writers get this question a lot, too. When you write something that’s deeply personal, you can’t help but feel as though readers are going on an Easter egg hunt through your emotional landscape, combing over the terrain for the bits and pieces of you that have fallen into the novel—a breadcrumb trail to your heart. I think we can’t help but leave that trail, especially when a particular work originates from the deepest parts of ourselves.

I care about all my books, of course, but my most recent, I’ll Meet You There, is particularly special to me. It’s a love story about two broken kids, both battling to defeat the hopelessness in and around them. Josh is a nineteen-year-old Marine who’s just returned from Afghanistan. He’s lost his leg and a bit of his mind. He has PTSD and is grieving the loss of his buddies. Then there’s toughly tender Skylar, an artist who may have to give up her dream of college in order to take care of her unstable mother. She works at a quirky roadside motel with Josh the…