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I suppose all readers have come across these from time to time-books that stick, books that jab internal sore spots we don't know we have. I'm guessing that's why we tear up without reason, flare up when we haven't been wronged. We're just taking our own sweet time, turning the pages, sipping our tea, and wham. We're blind-sided by some truth that picks the scab off an emotion that never really healed.

It's kind of like waking up after a hard day's work. We discover, in painful ways, muscles we didn't know we had. Same deal.

I certainly bump into these books-books that hurt. But I never imagined I'd write one. Writing was always my escape from pain, not my portal into it. Jerk, California, the story of a young man who struggles with both his Tourette Syndrome and the losses in his life, changed that.

My experience with Tourette's was a painful one, my journey to self-acceptance full of potholes and detours. I guess that's why my debut novel takes the form of a road-trip. It had to. For me, there was no other way to write it-no other way to express the feelings I had. This book hurt to write.

When I wrote Jerk, and even as I sit here and blog about it now, I'm thrown back into a time I don't like to revisit. The loneliness was intense, and remains crouched just below the surface. But I discovered that if I peeled back the years and once again wandered through my dark valley, the result would be real. That became my goal, my passion-write it real. Write it so that no matter its commercial success, I could say, yep, that's how it was; yep, that's how it felt.

Based on the emails I've received, I succeeded. I wrote it real. And the irony of the writer's journey, is that if you write a book that hurts, you've just written a book that helps.