About the Author

K.M. Lang

Reading saved my life as a child, in a figurative and perhaps even literal sense. The authors of my youth shielded me from a disastrous home life, and my favorite stories were those that spoke of hope, courage and compassion, while at the same time acknowledging the darker parts of the human experience. I wanted books to feel real and true, and I lived for the rush of empathy a skilled writer could evoke. When I found such writing, I devoured it—afterward, I would re-imagine the story, creating my own twists, scenes and dialogue, always with the goal of attaining that same emotional high.

When I was young, I worried I would run out of stories that made me feel something, and in adulthood I found a remedy for that fear. I learned to write, myself, and found that I could weave a tale with all the elements that tugged at my particular soul. In time, my fiction helped me land a position as a newspaper writer, and I was able to bring attention to causes, community members, businesses, activists and ordinary people whose passion often went unnoticed. In my small way, I was making a difference.

When I grew ill in 2013, my newspaper job was one of the first sacrifices my ailing body demanded of me—no more writing to deadlines. Today I write about my adjustment to never-ending illness, and my struggle to make peace with both the present and the past. And, of course, I’ll never stop telling stories. The way I see it, if I manage to give one person the gift that so many authors have given me, this sometimes-difficult journey will have made a little more sense.