THESE ARE THE DAYS
What happens when one life ends and a new one begins?
That question is at the heart of much fiction, maybe all fiction. If, at the end of your story, your characters can go back to their old lives, if no one has changed, then you haven’t written a very good story.
Life isn’t fair, as most of us know from firsthand experience. If you’re a writer, life better not be fair for your characters. Even readers who love a happily ever after, who would tolerate nothing less, expect some hardship along the way. Characters who have it all are boring.
In my new novel, Echoes in Rain, Olivia and Benji know all too well just how unfair life can be. From childhood trauma to epic betrayals by family and friends, trusting in others is anathema for these broken souls.
Olivia had a good life that the insidiousness of others took away. Benji, victim of chance and circumstance and a few bad choices, never knew a good life until he picked the straight and narrow path and made his dreams a reality.
Echoes in Rain opens with Olivia willing to do almost anything to put her life and career back on course, and Benji unwilling to risk what he has following a lifetime of deprivation. But as Benji learns, the FBI tends to get what the FBI wants—and it turns out he might want to help after all. Olivia intrigues him, but the special agent doesn’t do partnerships; she’s a lone wolf, a solitary hunter, an iconoclast in a conformist bureaucracy. And she’s on the trail of extremists who don’t play by anyone’s rules.
Olivia and Benji need each other, far more than they’re willing to admit. It’s a starting realization for them both.
What happens when they have no choice but to trust each other? What if they had to go through the days they went through, the days that forged their characters in fire, to stand before each other and both give and receive trust? What happens when two broken souls collide?
Maybe an old life ends, and a new one begins. One thing is certain: There’s no going back.
Join Olivia and Benji on their quest to save the country and each other in Echoes in Rain, coming December 2025.
