Thread by @straczynski

In the life of every writer or artist there's one work which they believe marks a point of transition, a work that will survive them. In television that’s #Babylon5 and #sense8. In prose, for me, it's Together We Will Go, which debuts July 6 in the US & UK tinyurl.com/yye7z5du

It’s a deeply personal novel that I could not have written ten or even five years ago. I had to grow into it. Or it had to grow into me. Funny how these things work. It’s a book composed entirely of risks --

-- a mainstream character story, not genre; an epistolary novel told in texts: voicemails, emails, audio recordings and journal entries by a dozen people rather than through one conventional narrator; and the subject examined by the book is suicide, but not in the expected way.

It uses that subject to explore the things that give our lives meaning as the characters bond and discover joy, compassion, love, loss, friendship and most of all: hope. Against the odds. However improbable. Hope.

The story is about twelve characters, most young, one older --

-- at what they believe is the end of their individual roads, who come together on a literal road as they undertake one last journey into the mysteries of the human heart. Flawed, lost, broken and isolated, they suddenly find themselves no longer alone --

-- sharing space and intent with others similarly inclined to ride out into the sunset…and from those alloyed personalities something unexpected, beautiful and profound emerges, shaping and changing them in deeply personal ways.

Together We Will Go is a generational bridge, a love letter to what is noblest in the soul. Catriona Ward calls it “a hymn to life.” Newsweek made it one of their top recommended summer reads, calling it “lighthearted, peculiar, poignant and profound all at once.”

It is also the capstone to 40 years as a writer; the story that I have been traveling toward since the very first time I put pen to paper. If you are someone who has followed my work in one field or another, if that work has held significance or meaning, or even just provided --

-- a worthy distraction, then I commend this book to you with all my heart. In every life there is an It: a divorce, a marriage, a birth, a death, a prognosis, a diagnosis or a new beginning, and nothing's the same any more. There's your life before It, and your life after It.

For me, for my work and my life, Together We Will Go is an It…and in celebration of our 30 year online conversation, I hope you will join me on the journey to wherever this particular It will take us both. simonandschuster.com/books/Together…