People sometimes ask where stories come from, as if they arrive fully formed: a lightning bolt, a neat idea, a beginning-middle-end that behaves itself.
But The Light Between Us didn’t arrive like that.
It arrived the way memory does, in fragments. In sensations. In the feeling of something unfinished tapping you on the shoulder years later and saying, “Are you sure you’re done with me?”
This book began as an atmosphere before it became a plot: the slant of afternoon sun across a school field, pencil shavings and varnish in an art room, the hush of a moment when you realise someone is looking at you properly. Underneath all of it was one persistent ache: the thought of a person you almost knew, and the life that might have happened if timing had been kinder.
I wanted to write a love story about attention
When I started, I knew I didn’t want to write a love story built on grand gestures and perfect lines. I wanted something quieter and truer, the kind of romance that grows through attention.
The way Sean watches the world is the way I wanted the book to read: observant, textured, full of small details that become emotional landmines later. The story is full of light because light is honest. It reveals things, it changes constantly, and you can never hold it for long. You can only notice it, and try.
That became the heartbeat of the writing process for me: slowing down enough to notice what most people rush past, and trusting that those “small” things are often where the biggest feelings live.
The “bent, not broken” feeling came first
Long before I knew exactly what would happen to Sean and Linda, I knew the emotional shape I wanted: bent, not broken.
I’ve always been drawn to the idea that people can be shaped by life, by loss, distance, mistakes, timing, without being ruined by it. That we can carry dents and still be ourselves. That we can lean, and keep growing anyway.
That’s why the crooked tree mattered so much to me from the beginning. It’s not just a symbol. It’s a statement. It’s resilience you can see.
The real Linda
And then there’s the personal truth underneath it all, the part I didn’t fully understand until I was already deep into the book.
On a personal note: I once knew a girl called Linda, many years ago.
We went on a couple of dates. Nothing dramatic happened. No big fallout. No betrayal. We simply drifted, the way people do when life is busy and you’re young and you assume there will always be more time later.
But there wasn’t.
Life moved on, and yet every so often, she would return in my mind the way old songs do. A face. A laugh. A moment that might have been the start of something if it had been given room.
And I often found myself wondering: what could have been?
That question is a quiet one, but it can follow you for years.
So yes, in many ways, this book became my tribute to an old flame that never really got the chance to be a fire. Not a rewrite of reality, not a “this is what happened” story, but a way of honouring that feeling. The tenderness of almost. The strange weight of unfinished.
Writing it was like opening an old drawer
Some scenes came easily, as if they were waiting for me. Others took time, because writing honestly means letting yourself feel things you’d packed away neatly.
There were days when the writing felt like comfort, like putting a warm coat on. And there were days it felt like standing in the cold, looking directly at the moments we pretend don’t matter anymore.
But the more I wrote, the clearer it became that The Light Between Us wasn’t only about romance.
It was about time.
About the versions of ourselves we leave behind.
About the people who shape us without staying.
About how memory can feel like light: shifting, beautiful, impossible to pin down, but real all the same.
Why I’m glad I wrote it
I didn’t write this book because I had all the answers.
I wrote it because I had a question that wouldn’t leave me alone.
And I think that’s why readers have connected with it: because most of us have someone like that in our past. Not necessarily a great love, not necessarily a tragedy, but a person we sometimes remember and think, “In another life… maybe.”
The Light Between Us is my way of saying: that feeling matters. Even if nothing “happened.” Even if it ended before it began.
Sometimes the smallest stories are the ones that stay with us the longest.
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