The Story Behind The Story

In 2020, I wrote a novel about a woman named Belle.

Belle's best friend dies. No warning. No goodbye. Just gone. She's left carrying a Ziploc bag of ashes, a truckload of rage, a thousand things she never got to say, and more unanswered questions than she knows what to do with.

At the time, I thought I was writing fiction. Dark humour. But really, it wrote itself.

Then life caught up.

My best friend was Shelley. Shell Bell.

I published the first edition in 2023 under a pen name because I was scared.

In 2024, Shelley was diagnosed with cancer. Around the same time, the physical copies of the book arrived. Shelley wanted a signed copy, even though it was a novel about losing your best friend while desperately trying not to become that story.

It never crossed my mind that Shelley might actually die. We were still making plans.

She never read the book.

Then 2025 happened. Shelley died. My dad died. My aunt died. Three impossible goodbyes in five months.

After Shelley died, I stood at her grave and asked for a sign. I got into my car. Cher came on the radio, one of Shelley's favourite artists. The song was "I Found Someone". The next song was John Waite's "Missing You". Different songs. Same four words. Since You've Been Gone.

The title of the novel I wrote years earlier. The novel she never got to read.

I sat there laughing. Crying. Swearing.

Now I'm putting the book back into the world. In my own name.

This isn't a book about healing.

This isn't a book about closure.

And it's definitely not a book about getting over it.

This is a book about friendship.

The kind that feels more like a marriage.

The kind that changes who you are.

The kind that doesn't end when somebody dies.

It's about rage. Love. Guilt. Dark humour. Music. Mediumship. The weird signs you don't know what to do with, and conversations that never really stop.

Belle writes letters to her dead best friend. She tells her she loves her. She tells her to go fuck herself. Sometimes in the same paragraph.

Because grief is complicated like that.

It's late. Everyone else is asleep.

You open the book.

A few pages in, Belle says something you've thought but never admitted out loud.

You laugh.
Then cry.
Then laugh again.

Because grief is absurd.

And somewhere along the way, something shifts.

Not because you've moved on. But because for the first time in a long time, you stop feeling like the only person in the world grieving this way.

You realise there are others. People who still talk to the dead. People who look for signs. People who still carry love for someone who isn't physically here anymore.

People like you.