Fading Away - Coming May 15th
Fading Away is a novel about second chances, parallel timelines, and the kind of love that leaves a mark—even when it ends in tragedy. It’s inspired by the life and death of Kurt Cobain, and the Neil Young lyric that haunted his suicide note: “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.” Tragically, he burned out. But what he deserved was a fade away, and that is what this novel is.
In present-day Seattle, 35-year-old James Smith returns to the rundown, mildew-soft house he inherited after the deaths of everyone who raised him—most recently, his grandmother. The air is stale. The floorboards groan. And grief, already familiar, curls up beside him like it never left. James is a recovering addict, the child of addicts, and the only thing he ever really loved just died in their bathtub. Her name was Ashley. She was beautiful and brilliant and as broken as he is.
She never stood a chance.
Her father, Michael White, died by suicide in 1994, just two weeks after the world lost Jakob Coburn—the iconic, enigmatic frontman of a generation-defining band, who took his own life in a blaze of fame and hopelessness. Michael’s death, one of hundreds that followed in the wake of Jakob’s, left Ashley with a void she could never fill. And James—who loved her so deeply, so messily, and so imperfectly—never could, either.
Until he remembers the shimmer.
Hidden in a moss-covered shed at the back of the property, the shimmer is a tear in time. A portal. A myth whispered by his grandfather, a man who vanished chasing the impossible. The shimmer always sends you to the day you were born. For James, that means May 3rd, 1990. And as the air shifts around him and colours bleed into strange clarity, he knows why he’s here.
He has to save Michael. To Save Michael, he has to save Jakob—if he gives a young man on the edge a reason to hold on—he can stop the tragedy at its root.
Set against the backdrop of Seattle’s grunge scene in its messy, glorious rise, Fading Away is a story about generational trauma, lost potential, and the aching need to believe we can rewrite our own endings. It's for the kids who were told they'd never make it. It's for the ones who didn't. And it's for anyone who's ever wanted to step backward through time—not to change the world, but to save just one life.
Even if it means losing your own.
