Gone Without Goodbye started with a single image that I couldn’t shake: a girl standing on a porch at dawn, waiting for a friend who wasn’t coming back.
I didn’t know who she was yet. I didn’t know what had happened or why. I just had that image — the porch, the light, the waiting — and a feeling I can only describe as a kind of grief mixed with dread. I opened a new document and started writing toward it.
That was about three years ago.
Where Kacey Came From
Kacey is not me, but she’s made of things I recognize. That specific kind of loyalty that tips into obsession — the way some friendships become so central to your identity that you can’t separate yourself from them. I’ve felt versions of that, and I think most people have.
What interested me was the dark side of it: what happens when that loyalty is tested? When the person you’ve organized your whole self around turns out to be someone you didn’t fully know? Kacey’s story is about that dismantling. Watching your own certainty collapse.
The closer she gets to the truth, the more she realizes that some questions don’t have clean answers.
The Part That Almost Broke the Book
About halfway through the first draft, I had a structural crisis. I knew where the story was going — I knew what had happened to Maddie — but I couldn’t figure out how Kacey would find out. Every path I wrote felt either too convenient or too slow.
I spent about six weeks stuck. Real, paralyzed stuck. I wrote around the problem, wrote scenes that weren’t in order, wrote character backstory that never made it into the final book. And then one night I realized I was thinking about it wrong. I was asking how does Kacey find the answer. The better question was: what does Kacey have to lose to earn the answer?
That reframe unlocked everything.
What Ended Up on the Cutting Room Floor
The first draft had an entire subplot involving Kacey’s younger brother that I loved and ultimately cut because it slowed the central investigation to a crawl. There was also a version of the ending that was significantly darker — I went back and forth on it for months.
I chose the ending I chose because I think Kacey earned it. And because I think readers earn it too, for staying with her.
What’s Next
I’m not ready to say much yet, but the next book is in progress. Different characters, different town, similar DNA — that same tension between what we know and what we’re afraid to know.
If you want to be the first to hear about it, the newsletter is the best place. I’ll share updates there before anywhere else.
Thank you for reading. It still feels surreal to type that.