I’d have never written this book without the gift of sobriety. When I set out to pen what would become my first novel, I was just about two years into my own recovery. At first, I considered writing a memoir in the vein of the many addiction memoirs that helped keep me sane during what was a good, but often trying, first year in Alcoholic’s Anonymous. So many of those stories were the real difference between picking up the drink again and believing I could make it another day. Ultimately though, I decided there are one too many memoirs already. Why couldn’t there be a piece of fiction that served a similar purpose? And so I set out to do that.

There would appear to be no specific place, no defined box, dedicated to recovery fiction-even as I’m certain other works are trying to provide the same experience I hope that mine will, for both the alcoholic and normies out there. This book isn’t a memoir by definition-but my own addiction, alcoholism, and recovery from it, (specifically the first six months), shaped the themes, settings, interactions and lessons I believe it expresses. I crafted the morals into an engaging beach read suspense/thriller in the hopes that those adverse to more traditional recovery literature might give it a read. The plot is a fabrication, but at its core My Dead Friend Sarah, for me, was an attempt to bring to life the very real experiences I believe all human beings, especially alcoholics, experience on their varying paths to more peaceful, honest lives.