When I began to write To Live and To Breathe on a gray day in early January of 2020, I had no idea what was in store for me and the rest of the world over the coming year. All I knew was that it was a Wednesday, and I had a history class at a wretched hour in the morning, and I was finally going to begin to write the story that had haunted my footsteps while I shifted books in the college library the previous year.
Like the ghostly shadows that inspired the story Timothy told the O'Connors, the fragments of this book had peeked out at me from odd shelves and bookends, long before What Is and Could Be was even finished. Timothy had learned to walk; now he wanted to run.
But it was one of the hardest books I've ever had to write. I finished the first draft of its predecessor in only a few months, but time slipped away while I wrote, and rewrote, and deleted and questioned everything I ever thought I knew about writing over the course of this draft. It is truly a story of hope in the midst of struggle, and it seems fitting to me that it came out of 2020. God knows what we need, when we need it.
So I wanted to thank everyone who has supported this story in any way. It really does mean the world. (And book three is on the way!)
Go out and live, friends.