For anyone that’s been following my writing journey, you’ll know that the 2018 version of Swimming Sideways didn’t start out as a contemporary coming-of-age story but as a 2008 paranormal fantasy called Fallen (That’s a link to that original story). After facing a plethora of rejections, I put this story away and moved away from writing believing that I just must not be good enough. Rejection—at the time—did a number on my self-confidence—but Abby, Seth, and Gabe didn’t stop talking to me regardless of my insecurities. So I wrote The Ugly Truth abandoning Fallen with the belief that perhaps Fallen had always been Seth’s story after all. That is when the paranormal fell away and The Ugly Truth became a contemporary coming-of-age story. I queried again. Only this time, after even more rejection, I stopped writing.
Fast forward several years, my father unexpectedly passed away.
Grief did strange things to me, and one of those things was forcing me to return to the one place I felt comfort, like the best version of myself. Writing was the one place that offered me solace amidst the grief. During that first year, I remember looking in the mirror and asking myself, “if you only had today, are you doing what you were meant to do?” And I knew that while I was doing something I was good at, writing had always been my passion—my calling. That awareness now alive inside me, within the next week, I was sitting in my car at a stoplight and Abby spoke up: “It’s time to write my story,” she said.
So I did. Finishing Abby’s story, Swimming Sideways, helped me fix Seth’s, The Ugly Truth, and suddenly Gabe started talking, and The Bones of Who We Are was written.
These stories go together—it’s hard to read one without the context of the other. Abby’s story, Swimming Sideways, is first because her story is the catalyst that brings change to Cantos, to the reality of what has become the norm for Seth and Gabe and Cantos High. But because she brings that change, Seth and Gabe can’t stay the same. Seth’s story The Ugly Truth is the follow up to Swimming Sideways and explores how that change manifests in his life (check the trigger warnings), but Seth’s change doesn’t occur in isolation, impacting Gabe in The Bones of Who We Are and pushing him toward his own change (check the trigger warnings). Each story is told from the perspective of one of the three characters, each offering their version of the story.
I’m really proud of these stories, of forcing myself to push through the the insecurities, the doubt, and the imposter syndrome to see these three books published. While it didn’t happen when I thought it would, these books getting finished and published happened when it was supposed to. Timing, sometimes, is everything.
If you haven’t read these stories, Abby kick things off, here’s with a letter introducing you to her journey.
And if you’ve read all three of these books, you might enjoy these short vignettes from In the Wait (but there are spoilers if you haven’t read the books).