I never would have guessed that waking up to a naked drunk in my bathtub and a heroin junkie on my couch would be the eventual inspiration for my first novel about a morphine-addicted Civil War veteran looking for redemption, but life is funny like that.

Yes, I was that good girl who ran with the wrong crowds. Call it “poor lad syndrome” or whatever, but I liked the sad and bad boys until I married one. Oops. Not so much fun after all. Yet there was that still, small voice in my head convincing me that even in the ugliest of situations there was hope for people—even ones like me.

I didn’t want to write because I didn’t want to fail, but I found failure anyway. In life there’s no escaping it. Everything I vowed I’d never do, I did. Every last bit of self-righteousness was smashed…