Writing some of the scenes in my next manuscript is stirring up a great deal of emotion. I draw from my own life, and yet it is not my life I am writing about. It feels like walking into a haunted house expecting ghosts — but instead, it is the walls that begin to speak, whispering their deepest secrets from a bygone era, the voices of those who once inhabited the rooms, the hearts that once filled the spaces.

These are beautiful souls with human stories. None of them lived the life they yearned for. I feel protective of all of them, and yet I cannot protect them — they must stand on their own within the lives they created.