From the writing desk ·
I Loved You Before You Knew Me
He loved her before she knew him. Surviving him means teaching him what love is not.
Complete · Unpublished · Seeking traditional representation
Inside the story
An ordinary life becomes someone else’s obsession.
In 1984 Tampa, Nina Caruso begins noticing small violations around the Royal Palms Motor Lodge: an object moved, a window opened, a man breathing behind an ordinary old-man mask. Her watcher is Milo Hollis, an escaped institutional patient who mistakes surveillance for devotion and believes a person’s final gaze can preserve the soul.
Detectives Rafael Martinez and Joan Rourke follow a trail through Milo’s past as Nina struggles to protect the life he has been studying. Her fear is real, but so is her determination to fight back. The novel follows the cost of an obsession that treats another person’s freedom as something to take away.
Set against the streets, motels, and hidden spaces of 1984 Tampa, this adult psychological horror thriller brings the danger close to home. Its central question is how Nina can reclaim her life from a man who believes that watching her means knowing her.