Running As Fast As I Can follows a teenage boy living in an abusive home who runs away trying to find someplace safe, and people he can call family. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

Obviously, all good fiction starts in some reality. When I founded Good Samaritan Home 22 years ago, my intent was to help men and women coming back from prison restart their lives. But the one constant theme I heard was they all came from broken and often abusive homes.

Although not as intense, my experiences growing up were similar to theirs. I think Daniel said it best, “I shared space with people called family. We had the same address, ate at the same table, even had the same last name, but we were strangers. We all lived alone together.” I believe this emotional isolation within families can be as destructive as any physical abuse—and I wrote Daniel’s story through that lens. That’s why I call this “everyone’s story.” I believe there are many people who come from the same haunted background as me. We just hide it better than my Good Samaritan Home residents.

The bottom line is everyone is looking for a second chance. It was that theme that I tried to convey through all the characters in my book.

Your novel brings the characters to life, all the pain and hurt, as well as the moments of joy. What was your writing process to ensure you captured the essence of the characters?

I started with a very rough outline 10 years ago, but the actual story evolved and grew as I wrote it. Or more accurately, as the characters revealed themselves. Initially, the primary characters such as Daniel, Elizabeth, and Kate, were two-dimensional, flat, without any real personality. Beta readers couldn’t feel them, and therefore, they couldn’t identify with them. Part of the problem was my background. My academic training, and especially my years as a journalist, taught me to present the facts—who, what, when, where, and how. Never introduce emotion into a story. That’s fine for a research paper, but it doesn’t read well as a novel. Finally, my editor suggested—more like demanded—that I allow my emotions to come out in the characters—to show them as real people who struggled with insecurities, doubts, and fears through their actions. That made a significant difference in the emotional intensity of the story. But it was when I applied that same approach to all the supporting characters, like Doc Samuels, Ruthie, Sister Rose, James and Elijah, Daniel’s three kids, and especially Charles, that’s when the story really came alive. But that was no easy process. It took seven years and more than twenty drafts, adding 50,000 words to the manuscript, I might add.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

Initially, it was a story of a boy growing up in a dysfunctional family, but that soon evolved into sexual abuse as the church sex scandals came to light. The common thread seemed to be vulnerable kids in broken families looking for adult attention. They were easy prey—just like Daniel. But what we never knew was what happened to these kids afterward. How do they function normally as adults when they have been so damaged as children? I call it “broken from birth.”

It’s like Somerset Maugham’s character Philip Carey in Of Human Bondage. He was born with a club foot, and he spent the rest of his life struggling to be normal—physically and emotionally. And that was Daniel. He was born with an emotional club foot, from a mother and father who ignored him and a pastor who abused him. He limped through the rest of his life, and the insecurities, and especially the false sense of shame and guilt that always accompanies child sexual abuse, affected every relationship, every choice he made.

That internal struggle led Daniel into a world he never imagined possible, like destructive relationships, depression, poverty, homelessness, and addiction. However, the key theme that arises out of all this is second chances. But not some simplistic just-say-no, come-to-Jesus solution that seems made for television. Real life is messy, with a lot of mistakes, and lots of do-overs. Too many of us have started so far behind, and with so few tools, we don’t know how to start over. All we know to do is to go back to the same destructive relationships, making the same wrong choices over and over. But the key theme here is that we keep trying, keep starting over, and never quit running.

That said, the one subtle theme that emerged was that our salvation often comes from unexpected sources. All the people who helped Daniel learn to walk normally were broken in their own way—like Doc Samuels, Elijah, James, Sunshine and Mellow, even Father Webber. And the one person who was most instrumental in helping Daniel through his greatest crisis was Charles. Daniel said it best. “I had degrees in both psychology and theology, but this guy who could barely read, and who’s been in prison all his life, knew more about forgiveness than me.” I remind myself of this periodically with the men and women I deal with at Good Samaritan Home. No matter how damaged they may be, no matter what crime they may have committed, they are still part of God’s fallen creation, and I can still learn something from them. Maybe that’s why I sometimes tell people I feel safer in prison with these guys than I ever did in a church board meeting when I was a pastor. In prison, everyone admits they are a sinner. In church, we just hide it better.

What is the next book you’re working on, and when can your fans expect it out?

It’s called Requiem. It means a Mass of remembrance for the dead. In Running As Fast As I Can, there is a 30-year gap between the last chapter and the epilogue. Requiem is the story about what happens to all the remaining characters. Spoiler alert—a main character dies tragically at the end of Running. How do the remaining characters adapt—or not adapt—to that death? But this time I am looking at bringing in a political thriller element as Daniel finds evidence that this death may not have been accidental. And that leads him all the way to Washington for his answers. But I still want to maintain the same intense emotional storyline of Running As Fast As I Can. This time, however, I don’t plan on spending ten years writing it. I hope to have it completed in a year.

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Original source: https://literarytitan.com/2024/02/10/emotional-isolation-within-families/