I’ve never believed in perfect characters. Perfection doesn’t move us. It doesn’t linger. What stays with us are the people who stumble, fall, and somehow get back up again.
John Torberg isn’t perfect—he’s a father failing promises and a journalist torn between ambition and responsibility. Theodore Tooley isn’t perfect either—he’s brilliant, broken, and drowning in his own self-destruction. But that’s why we care about them. Because they’re real.
When I wrote these characters, I thought about the colleagues I knew—the ones who seemed larger than life in print, but carried private battles nobody saw. Addiction, grief, ambition, regret—these aren’t side stories. They’re the heart of what it means to be human.
Readers connect with characters who bleed because we all do. We’ve all faced demons we don’t talk about. We’ve all made promises we couldn’t keep. And when we see someone else stumble, we recognize ourselves.
That’s the gift of storytelling: it lets us see our own scars in someone else’s reflection, and somehow, that makes the healing easier
