This book has been a passion project for me for almost a decade now, one that has gone through several iterations. I began it as an overly ambitious project in film school, then shifted to a graphic novel, before I ultimately set down to write it as a traditional novel in November of 2014 for National Novel Writing Month. The book is currently a little over halfway done, and I’m hoping to finish it in the next couple months. It started with a painting I saw in passing in a small art gallery in Orange County, and that image set in my mind the seed of a much larger story.

The Girl with the Broken Heart is a fable about love in all of its many forms, and how that love can scar and torture, can destroy as easily as it can create joy, how it can be a deadly trap for some and a redemption for others. The characters are caught in a purgatory of sorts, forced to live out their existence as entertainment for others because they are trapped by the emotional pain of their pasts. Their personal histories unfold as stories and fables during interludes in the main narrative, pulling from a wide range of cultures that have influenced American folklore over centuries of storytelling.

It’s my hope that this story will ultimately make people think about how we love, and how that love can be dangerous if mishandled, how loving blindly is just as deadly as being closed off to the idea of love, and how love for another is meaningless if you don’t respect and love yourself.