“When I sat down to write Dreams Are For The Dead, I wasn’t trying to follow a formula. I wasn’t chasing a tidy arc or a clean narrative. I gave myself permission to break every rule I’d ever learned about structure, genre, and voice. I didn’t want this memoir to just tell a story—I wanted it to feel like what surviving actually feels like: chaotic, nonlinear, beautiful and brutal all at once.

I let memory guide the flow and I allowed pain to exist on the page without needing it to be tied up with a bow.

This wasn’t just writing. It was rebuilding. It was therapy. It was an experiment in honesty, and in whether the truth—even the ugliest parts of it—could still be beautiful.”