Memento Mori Amor Fati

After clawing his way through a brutal divorce, Peter Stephenson 48 has it all: a multimillion-dollar business, a colossal house in suburban Sydney, an attractive young fiancée, and three children who adore him. But when prostate cancer cruelly strikes, Peter is forced to choose between two horrific treatments, both of which threaten debilitating side effects: impotence, and nappies for life.

After he suffers the worst-case scenario short of death itself, his oncologist gives him an chart showing how many weeks he has lived and how many weeks he supposedly has left to live. When the tiny circles representing weeks change overnight, first subtracting years and then adding them after he works out, loses weight, and eats better, he’s convinced that his doctor and his fiancée are manipulating him. Meanwhile, his four-year-old son Dylan communes with an invisible demonic presence in his bedroom by night, and by day he fills sketchbooks with crayon drawings of Peter dead and buried under the ground.

Debilitated by cancer and distracted by his attempted recovery his consulting business—and family’s finances—collapse with savage speed. Clients vanish. His partners threaten to dilute his shares. His credit cards are maxed out. The tax office demands more than a hundred thousand dollars he doesn’t have. Johanna, oblivious to what’s happening at work, spends money like other people breath: all the time and without thinking, while the rent on their luxury home devours thousands each week. Banished to the foldout bed in his home office, Peter scrutinizes her every word and glance, wondering whether she still sees him as a man or as a burden already half buried.

On his chart, new death dates keep appearing alongside rotating quotations from Stoic philosophers like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, teaching and reminding Peter that everyone dies, that we should all learn to accept and even love our fate, that sometimes we meet our fate on the road we take to avoid it, that cowards die a thousand times while the brave only die once, and that wrapping ourselves in a protective bubble to avoid danger and death does not count as living.

Finally, the entity behind the chart seems less interested in predicting death than orchestrating it. When his business fully collapses, Johanna finally leaves him and takes Dylan on a holiday with her ex-boyfriend. That’s when the chart announces that Peter just one day left to live. Terror eclipses reason. With the countdown shrinking hour by hour and the invisible presence in the house ready to collect what Peter owes, he’s convinced there may be one final way to bargain with fate before it comes for him.

Inspiration

Counting Miracles was perhaps one of my favorite novels to write. Many years ago, I had an idea: an old man is alone in the woods with his dog, in a life-threatening situation. The circumstances that led him to that place hadn’t fully formed in my mind yet, so I held on to this image, waiting until I was able to build on it and give it shape. Waiting to turn it into a story worth reading. It was years before I was able to do so.Then came the pandemic, and like so many others, I watched as the world collectively grieved life as we knew it. That is how the old man became Jasper. I knew I wanted to feature a character who finds purpose and guidance through religion, even after surviving a tragedy that would make anyone question how a benevolent God could allow such suffering. The intention was not to write a religious book, but instead, write a religious character that serves as a vehicle to re-examine this existential question. Grief and loss remain universal truths. Love is not without loss, and to grieve means you had something worth grieving. I often come back to this inevitable push and pull in my writing. While readers may not necessarily align themselves with Jasper’s faith, hopefully they will resonate with him as a human being.Tanner is another character through which I explore the different ways people cope. My cousin Todd, an army veteran who deployed to Afghanistan shortly after the events of 9/11, lost many of the men he served with to suicide. How does a person make sense of that loss without isolating themselves? Both Jasper and Tanner grapple with the remains of a life they no longer recognize. They must decide how to move forward, and if they even want to. I needed someone to anchor these two men and offer an alternative to the solitude they’ve chosen. I thought many of my readers, particularly women, could relate to a character who feels like they have to do it all. Between work and kids, there is often little time left for themselves. Enter Kaitlyn. As a writer, but more so as a human, I was eager to dive into this story and bring these characters together (and apart) in new and exciting ways. After all, if you aren’t holding your breath every now and then, I haven’t done my job.

Setting

Asheboro, NC

Located in the heart of North Carolina, Asheboro is home to rich economic, natural and cultural resources. Known as the center point of North Carolina, the city is located in the gently rolling Piedmont plateau region and near the fifty-thousand acre Uwharrie National Forest.

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Inspiration

Setting

International Editions