The Pace of Nature is a two-novel series I began writing in 2010 for two reasons:

1. I believed I had an important and compelling story to tell.
2. I wanted to help people, especially those who’ve been told who they are before they ever had a chance to figure it out for themselves.

I wanted to show that just because someone, whether a doctor, a parent, or a so-called authority, smacks a label on you, it doesn’t mean you have to accept it. You can reject their version of your story and write your own.

The Pace of Nature is set in two primary places: home and Hyde. These were the two worlds that shaped me, one rooted in family, and the other in forced reinvention.

When I entered my MFA program in 2014, I seriously considered telling this story as a memoir. I tried. I drafted sections as personal nonfiction. But I kept running into a wall, one that I think many writers face when mining personal history. I realized I couldn’t write intimate truths about my family or the people from Hyde and claim them as the truth. Because truth isn’t singular. Everyone sees through a different lens.

Take the house I grew up in, for example. I remember it as light, grand, and full of places I could disappear into. One of my sisters remembers it as dark, crowded, and hard to breathe in. Both are true, in their own way. That’s the problem with memoir: it asks you to write your truth as the truth, and I couldn’t do that in good conscience.

So after a few different versions, I landed on telling the story through fiction, specifically, through the voice of a character named Lilly Difeo. Writing in the first person, from Lilly’s point of view, gave me space to speak my truth without claiming ownership over anyone else’s. It gave me room to explore memory, emotion, and experience with honesty and creative freedom.

The Pace of Nature is based on true events from my life. It’s creative nonfiction disguised as a novel.

But for now, what I want you to know is this:
Sometimes fiction can tell the truth better than fact ever could.

Next week, I’ll share more about Lilly Difeo, who she is, how she came to be, and why I chose her to carry this story. I’ll also begin pulling back the curtain on The Pace of Nature itself – its themes, its secrets, and the personal experiences that shaped its pages.

Home gave me silence. Hyde demanded confession. This is the story of what broke, and what survived.