Behind the Scenes of Unbound: The Opening Chapter

Hey Everyone!

As promised, I’m circling back to Unbound this month to take a deeper dive into specific scenes and characters—exploring the inspiration behind them, the personal parallels, and where fact meets fiction.

For this first scene spotlight, I want to talk about the opening chapter. It felt only fitting to start here because that moment—while fictionalized—was rooted in a pivotal experience from my own life. And just like it shaped the trajectory of my life, it also sets the emotional tone for our protagonist, Andy.

Spoiler Alert Ahead if you haven’t yet read the book.

As I’ve shared before in a Q&A, the opening scene was heavily fictionalized. The real incident that inspired it was far more brutal and violent than what appears on the page. I made the deliberate choice to tone it down—not to minimize what happened, but to avoid writing something that might feel gratuitous or overwhelming to the reader. Instead, I chose to focus on the emotional and psychological weight of that moment: the fear, the isolation, and the quiet resolve it took to plan an escape.

Even in its softened form, that scene was incredibly difficult to write. Revisiting those memories—being sixteen, standing at the edge of an impossible decision—was emotionally draining. At that point in my life, I had been given a clear ultimatum by my father: either work full-time and pay rent, or go to school full-time and work part-time. But I had neither the resources nor the support to pursue school. The military felt like the only option that offered a way out, even with the risks it posed—especially when it came to hiding who I really was.

So while the details in the novel are fictionalized—the dialogue, the specific events—the emotional truths are very real. The family dynamics were real, too (with names changed, of course). And that two-year period Andy faces in the book? It mirrors the real countdown I lived through—though in hindsight, those years passed in a blur. I remember clinging to time with friends, soaking in every moment of freedom I could get, while mentally steeling myself for the biggest leap of my life.

I hope this gives a bit more context to how Unbound begins, and why that opening chapter means so much to me. It wasn’t just the start of a novel—it was the start of a journey, for both Andy and for me.

Thanks, as always, for reading and supporting my work.

— Chris