By Tristan Kane
There’s a moment in every writer’s life when the story they’re telling stops being about the characters on the page… and starts becoming about themselves.
For me, Two Doors Down was that story.
I didn’t set out to write a romance novel. I set out to process something I couldn’t quite speak out loud — the ache of being in love with someone who feels like home while living in a life that no longer feels like your own. I’d been through a heartbreak I never saw coming, the kind that doesn’t just break you… it breaks the version of you that used to believe love was enough.
I remember walking around my backyard one evening, cold breeze in my face, phone in hand, pacing while I dictated an early chapter into my notes app — heart pounding, eyes burning. That night, I wrote through the tears. Because the story wasn’t fiction. Not really. It was therapy. It was confession. It was closure I never got.
Two Doors Down is about Christy, a woman who feels invisible in her own marriage, and James, the neighbor two doors away who sees her — really sees her — for the first time in a long time. But beneath that surface, it’s about something we all wrestle with: the desire to be chosen. Not just once, but every day. Without apology.
James’s character became the voice I couldn’t use in real life. He’s the man I wanted to be — grounded, kind, emotionally present, but also deeply wounded and afraid to hope again. Christy was everything James needed to believe in himself again… and in writing her, I was reminding myself that maybe someone like her could exist for me too.
This book isn’t just a story. It’s a time capsule of a man rediscovering himself through fiction — a man choosing to live with an open heart again, even after it had been shattered.
And if Two Doors Down has found its way to your hands, I hope you feel that honesty on every page. I hope it reminds you that even in silence, connection can spark. That even in pain, healing is possible. That love, when it’s real, doesn’t rescue you — it reflects the strength you forgot you had.
Thanks for reading.
— Tristan