The Weight We Carry, The Weight We Release: On Writing My First Literary Novella

The Quietest Milestone of My Writing Life

There are moments in a writer’s life that unfold quietly but change everything. Tonight is one of those moments for me.

I just published my first novella — The Weight of Peace — and although I have written for years, although I have published books before, although I teach writing every day of my life, this one feels different.

Because for the first time, I have published literary fiction under my own name. And that feels like a beginning.

Why This Book Matters in a Way I Didn’t Expect

I started writing this story with a simple desire: to see if I could write something true — not only technically true, but spiritually, politically, emotionally true.

I wanted a story that didn’t rush. A story that breathed. A story that echoed the quiet internal shifts that change us forever, long before anyone else notices.

And somewhere between Malta, Rome, the refugee corridors, and the hush of a chapel lamp, the story deepened. It became something more than fiction.

It became a meditation on the peace we perform for others… and the peace we finally allow ourselves to receive.

A Debt of Gratitude to Yanis Varoufakis

I cannot speak about this novella without acknowledging the moment it first began forming inside me — almost nine years ago — when I read Yanis Varoufakis’ Adults in the Room.

Varoufakis showed the world something few are willing to reveal:

• the rawness of political rooms,
• the heaviness of negotiation tables,
• the way human lives are shaped and sometimes sacrificed by technical language, closed-door meetings, and the choreography of power.

His book haunted me, not with despair, but with clarity.

For years I carried questions I couldn’t put down:

• How does inequality persist in a world that claims to know better?
• How can so much suffering coexist with so much indifference?
• How do adults walk into those rooms, knowing the stakes, and still sleep at night?

It took writing The Weight of Peace for me to finally understand the answer:

The world is what we have made it.

And we are all doing the best we can inside structures that were not built for mercy. There will always be chaos if we choose to see chaos. There will always be imbalance, bureaucracy, fear, political correctness, fragile peace.

But that does not mean we cannot be at peace.

That realization shaped this book more than anything else.

The First Weight We All Carry

The novella follows Stella, a diplomat who has perfected the art of keeping peace — first in her childhood home, and later on the European stage.

But beneath the politics lies something universal:

We all carry a “first weight.”

The weight of keeping the room calm.

The weight of being good.

The weight of not disappointing anyone.

The weight of believing love is conditional — even God’s.

Writing Stella forced me to confront the places where I had carried that weight too. And writing her journey became, without exaggeration, a spiritual milestone for me.

If the story makes you emotional, it is because it was born from emotion.But more importantly, it is because something in you is ready to surface, to be acknowledged, validated, and finally set free.

We each carry our own weight of peace.

Some of us have just learned to hide it better.

Where to Find the Book

The Weight of Peace is now available on Amazon — a literary novella about diplomacy, faith, trauma, and the quiet mercy that can reshape a life.

If you choose to read it, and if it moves you, even a single sincere sentence left as a review means more than you know.

Independent authors travel by the light of their readers. And tonight, that light feels especially bright.