I’ve Never Really Talked About This.

It's Time To Write My Story

I have something to confess.
There’s a story I haven’t told many people.

Why? Honestly, I was embarrassed.
That feels like an awful word, but it’s the first that comes to mind.

A few years ago, my wife and I built our dream house. We picked everything — the tile, the cabinets, the floors. It was supposed to be our “forever home” for our four daughters. A beautiful tree in the yard. A big kitchen for hosting. A place where you could picture a beautiful new life.

That’s why we never imagined something like this could happen.

At first, it was subtle. Packages started stacking up on a neighbor’s porch across the street. Days passed. More packages. No signs of life.

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Then one day, I saw the police.

No sirens. No chaos. Just a couple of officers standing in front of the house, asking quiet questions. But something was off. You could feel it. That eerie kind of stillness where no one knows exactly what’s going on, but everyone senses it’s bad.

I walked over and demanded to know, “What is going on?” I asked in my deepest, most professional dad voice. They were not impressed.

“Sir, you need to stand over there.”
Then came the police tape. A line I couldn’t cross. Something I’d seen in movies a hundred times, but never in real life. Never in my neighborhood.

Moments later, a neighbor told me what had happened:
A woman was found dead inside the house.
She’d been stabbed to death.
They believed it happened days earlier.

That’s all I knew at the time. Then came the news vans. The crime scene truck. Detectives in suits.

I texted my wife, Sarah:
“I think we live across the street from a murder.”

There’s a lot more to this story. And I’ll share it. But this is the moment that changed everything.

I’ve spent the last few years writing about it.

Not the actual crime — that’s not my story to tell.
But the feeling. The dread. The questions. The moment you realize your neighborhood isn’t as safe as it seemed.

I wrote a novel inspired by all of it.
Right now it’s called The Neighborhood. Here is a mock cover.

And this is the place where I’ll share the story behind the story — what really happened, how it shaped the book, and what I’ve learned while trying to get this novel published.

If this hits something in you — or you know someone obsessed with true crime or domestic thrillers — I’d love if you’d share this post.

Maybe it’ll help the book become a reality.

More soon,

Rob