Fearless began as my entry for National Novel Writing Month 2011. Inspired by a single line of dialogue and one reactive look, it grew from being a simple story about one calloused young man finding love with a fresh and bold young woman, to an examination of the tethers people have to their own physical-ness, and how they use their bodies to identify themselves. As the words flowed, I realized I’d created a full-blown world full of people with fears, anxieties, passions, sorrows, and guilt. Their journey – of how they learn to live with those feelings, overcoming some and just accepting others – became my journey, too.

The story is about honesty. It’s about trust. It’s about redemption and finding strength within oneself, both physical and emotional. It’s about how people sometimes get sucked down into life’s wild and random undertow…and how some of them can still get up again even when they do. But most of all, the story is about love: the love that exists between friends who support each other and are willing to call one another on their shit; the love between family who are willing to protect each other even to the point of blindness; and – especially – the love that exists between lovers who are searching for someone to hold onto, both in the cold, clutching night and the warm, bright day.

I’ve written many stories over my life. Some of them were just for the fun, others were for the challenge, still others were because I wanted to make an impression. None of them have I enjoyed imagining and writing so much as this one, though. It might not end up being my most powerful, my most popular, or even my best work. But it’s been the most true, in its people and their feelings, their failures and their successes.

And that’s made it worth it.