Back to 2002: The Beginning of the Tangled Series

When readers open Tangled Justice, they often notice the year: 2002. Some may wonder why I chose to begin my story there, rather than in the present day. The truth is, the decision was never arbitrary. 2002 was the world I knew the moment when the story first began to take shape in my mind, and a year that carried personal significance for me at that time as a New Yorker.

I began writing the earliest version of what would eventually become Tangled Justice in 2002. At the time, I had no idea it would take me twenty-three years to bring it to completion. Life intervened, as it always does. Career detours, heartbreaks, growth. But the seed was planted then, and when I returned to the story again and again over the years, it always pulled me back to that moment in time.

2002 was not just another year. It was the year after 9/11, and as anyone who lived in New York then will tell you, the city was forever changed. I can still remember the heaviness in the air, the uncertainty in every conversation, the way the skyline itself looked like a wound. As a New Yorker, I carried that sense of loss and resilience into every part of my life. Writing was one of the ways I processed it.

It felt important to anchor Kasey’s story in that landscape because she, too, is a character who must navigate choices shaped by forces larger than herself. I have always loved New York, not just for its energy and ambition, but for the grit of its people, the toughness born out of surviving hardship and the refusal to back down even when the odds are stacked against you. That same grit lives in Kasey. She is imperfect, scarred, and emotional, but like the city that shaped her, she is relentless.

Post-9/11, America was living with heightened scrutiny, political tension, and a gnawing sense that justice, power, and truth were more fragile than we had ever realized. That atmosphere bleeds into Tangled Justice and sets the tone for the novel.

There’s also something about the world of 2002 that lends itself perfectly to mystery and crime fiction. Smartphones didn’t exist yet. Social media was barely beginning. Investigations relied on paper trails, pay phones, and face-to-face encounters. Secrets stayed buried longer. Choices carried weight because you couldn’t Google your way out of them. That slower, heavier rhythm gave me the perfect backdrop for Kasey Landon’s world: fog-shrouded streets and the sense that truth is always just out of reach.

So yes, 2002 was deliberate. It wasn’t just where the world was when I first began writing this story, it was the only place it could begin. The fog of San Angelo. The tension in the air. The sense of a world caught between what had been lost and what was still uncertain. That was the soil from which the Tangled Series grew.

It has taken me twenty-three years to bring this story to life. Two dozen years of stops and starts, of abandoning drafts and picking them up again, of living my own choices and consequences alongside Kasey’s. In some ways, her story is tied to mine: flawed, messy, imperfect, but relentless.

That’s why the year matters. 2002 isn’t just a setting. It’s the beginning of everything for Kasey, for the world she lives in, and for me as a writer finally ready to tell her story.

Photo credit: September 11, 2002 - Business Insider, Stunning Images of the New York City Skyline Every Year on 9/11