How My Failed Dating History Inspired My Writing

Let’s be honest—dating is basically research when you’re a thriller writer.

I didn’t always see it that way. Back when I was crying into my ice cream after my college boyfriend ghosted me (seriously, who disappears after three years together?), I wasn’t thinking, “Wow, this emotional devastation will make excellent material someday!” I was just trying to figure out how someone I thought I knew completely could transform into a stranger overnight.

But years later, when I was struggling with the ending of one of my books, I found myself drawing on that exact feeling—the disorienting realization that you never really knew someone at all. That relationship taught me how quickly trust can shatter, and how desperately we try to reconstruct the past to make sense of the present.

Then there was my brief relationship with “Coffee Shop Guy” (you know who you are). We met right here in Spokane, had an intense three-month whirlwind romance, and then I discovered he had another girlfriend in Seattle. Plot twist! He’d constructed this entire alternate life for when he was “away on business trips.” The level of organization in his deception was actually impressive in a completely horrifying way.

That particular heartbreak gave me insight into how someone could meticulously maintain a double life. The careful scheduling, the separate phone, the practiced stories—all of it went straight into creating David’s character in A Glimpse of Us. Though I made him much worse than my ex, obviously. Fiction needs to be a little more dramatic than real life.

My personal favorite inspiration came from my shortest relationship ever—two weeks with a guy who seemed absolutely perfect until he borrowed my laptop. I came back from the bathroom to find him scrolling through my documents folder, reading snippets of the thriller I was working on. When I asked what he was doing, he said, completely seriously, “Just making sure you’re not going to murder me in my sleep. You have a dark mind.”

We didn’t make it to date three, but he gave me something invaluable—the question at the heart of The Venting Club: How do you love someone when you’re afraid of what’s inside their head?

I’m not saying you need to date terrible people to write good thrillers. Please don’t do that. But I do think there’s something uniquely instructive about those moments when relationships crumble. They strip away our comfortable illusions and force us to see that even the people closest to us have hidden depths—sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrifying.

My friends always joke that dating me comes with risks—not just the normal ones, but the possibility of ending up fictionalized if things go badly. I promise I change enough details that no ex would recognize themselves. Probably.

The guy who’s now a suspiciously similar character to the victim in chapter one? Pure coincidence.

And for what it’s worth, not all my relationship experience turns into darkness on the page. Sometimes the small, tender moments make it in too—the inside jokes, the comfortable silences, the feeling of being truly seen by another person. Those connections, even the broken ones, teach us about human nature in all its complexity.

So to all my exes—thanks for the material. And to my future dates—don’t worry, I always change the names to protect the guilty.

(P.S. If you’re reading this and thinking you might be the inspiration for a character who meets an unfortunate end…maybe don’t ghost people after three years? Just a thought.)