A LOVE STORY: SOMEBODY I USED TO KNOW Behind the Scenes Part II

SOMEBODY I USED TO KNOW has a lot of things in common with my other novels. It’s suspenseful. It’s about regular people dealing with extraordinary circumstances. And it’s full of twists and turns that should have you guessing until the very last page.

But there is one thing unique about this book—for the first time one of my books will include a love story. It’s not a romance novel by any means, but it is a story about a man who lost the love of his life at an early age and wishes more than anything he could get her back.

I never write stories that are directly autobiographical. None of the crazy things that have happened in my books—missing children, mysterious siblings, murdered parents—have ever happened in my life. But my books, like most fiction, are emotionally autobiographical. I appear in my books through the emotional experiences of my characters. People have disappeared from my life. Like anyone else, I’ve suffered losses. And I’ve learned that people I thought I knew weren’t who I thought they were.

The love of my life didn’t die when I was twenty. I’m married to her. Molly and I have been married for almost eighteen years, and there’s no doubt in either one of our minds that we belong together. But like the characters in the book we met in college when we were young. And dumb. And our path to starting those eighteen years together was anything but straight and smooth.

Molly and I met at the beginning of our junior year. We fell in love quickly and completely. We dated those last two years of college and then for another year after graduation. Much to our parents’ chagrin, we moved in together. And then we got engaged. But I’ve come to decide that the twenties are the toughest decade for young people to get through. For us, we felt like we were adrift. We didn’t have the immediate goal of school anymore. We didn’t have excellent careers. My dream of being a writer seemed as distant as the moon. We let those pressures get the best of us, and when we were twenty-three, we split up.

We spent three years apart, living in different cities and dating other people. We talked from time to time. But we also went long stretches without talking to each other. (Okay we had one short-lived attempt to get back together, but that didn’t stick.) We were far apart emotionally and physically. But eventually we got our shit together. We reconnected for good. And once we started dating again, we knew it was for forever. How does that Peaches and Herb song go? “Reunited and it feels so good”?

But when I think of those three years, I think about how dangerous they were. What if we hadn’t gotten it right? What if one of us had died before we ever had a chance to really spend our lives together? What would it be like to live knowing that one’s best chance for true love was already gone?

That’s what Nick Hansen, the protagonist of SOMEBODY I USED TO KNOW, lives with. That’s what he carries around with him.

Will he ever get a chance to make it right?

I guess you’ll have to read the book.

SOMEBODY I USED TO KNOW will be released on July 7th. It is available for pre-order now: http://tinyurl.com/kj8927d