The successful and sometimes controversial novelist Anne Rice offers the following advice to aspiring writers: write the book you want to read and that doesn’t yet exist. Another piece of advice she has: don’t listen to other peoples’ advice.
I wasn’t aware of these words of wisdom at the time, but my instincts told me to follow both of those guiding principles when I started writing the book that has become my debut novel, The Fall.
The Fall is set largely in the world of college sports and is told through the perspective of three college seniors—two guys and a girl—who find themselves thrown into an unlikely triangle. Self-discovery, sex, tears, music, football and friendships ensue. Also, some skinny dipping. College is a fantastically interesting time in life, filled with terrifying and hilarious moments that amount to a crash course on identity. And identity—in ways funny, serious and inspirational—is the subject at the core of The Fall.
Both sports and writing are central to my identity, and both framed the context of my struggles with identity as I decided to come out in college. I came out as a sophomore on the University of Utah’s ski team. I knew no other out athletes. It was only after I wrote an article for Outsports in 2003 about my experience being an openly gay college athlete, that I was flooded with responses—many from anonymous closeted college athletes—and I began to realize that my story wasn’t so uncommon. Or, at least, it shouldn’t have to be.
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