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If you’ve ever loved a book enough to wonder how it came together, welcome to the club.
One of my favorite things about being a reader is discovering the stories behind the story. The scenes that almost looked completely different. The characters who refused to cooperate. The tiny pieces of an author’s real life that somehow found their way onto the page.
All the Quiet Things has more of those moments than I can count.
Since it was my debut novel, every part of the experience felt new. Readers were meeting characters I’d been carrying around in my head for years. Every review, message, and comment reminded me that these people who had once existed only in my imagination now belonged to readers, too.
Enough time has passed now that I can laugh about some of the decisions I nearly made while writing it.
A few make me cringe, and a couple still surprise me.
One of them involves a dog who meant more to me than I can adequately put into words.
So today I thought I’d share a handful of things you probably don’t know about All the Quiet Things.
Cal Almost Didn’t Have A Last Name
Looking back, there are a handful of writing decisions I’m very grateful I abandoned before this book made it into readers’ hands, and this one might be at the top of the list.
In the earliest version of the story, Del wasn’t supposed to know Cal’s last name. Not halfway through the book. Not near the end. The plan was for that information to remain a secret for almost the entire novel, which seemed like a fantastic idea while I was outlining.
At the time, I thought it added mystery. I thought it would make Cal more intriguing and create an extra layer of tension between them. In my head, it felt romantic and dramatic and exactly the sort of thing readers would find irresistible.
Then I started writing actual scenes.
Once Del and Cal began spending more time together, the flaws in my brilliant plan became impossible to ignore. Every conversation raised new questions. Every interaction made me realize I was asking readers to believe that a smart, observant woman would continue building a relationship with someone while somehow never learning one of the most basic facts about him.
The longer I worked on the manuscript, the more ridiculous the idea became.
At some point, I remember sitting at my computer wondering how many conversations two people could realistically have before a last name naturally came up. The answer was significantly fewer than I had originally planned.
What made the decision easy was realizing that the mystery wasn’t actually serving the story. Instead of making Cal more interesting, it was beginning to make Del look far less perceptive than she really was. Anyone who knows Del knows she isn’t the kind of person who simply forgets to ask obvious questions, and I didn’t want readers spending the entire book wondering what on earth she was doing.
So Cal got a last name.
I like to think that’s evidence of personal growth on my part.
Writing often involves solving complicated plot problems, building emotional arcs, and figuring out how to surprise readers in meaningful ways. Occasionally, though, the job is simply recognizing that you’ve talked yourself into a terrible idea and backing away from it before it causes permanent damage.
Vivienne Became More Complicated Than I Expected
Vivienne surprised me from the very beginning.
Going into the book, I knew she would be an important part of the story, but my understanding of her was fairly surface level. I knew the role she needed to play. I knew the effect she would have on certain events. What I hadn’t fully grasped yet was the extent of her influence over Cal and how deeply that influence had shaped the way he moved through the world.
As the manuscript grew, so did my understanding of their relationship.
Certain scenes would reveal something I hadn’t considered before, and suddenly an interaction that seemed straightforward on the surface carried an entirely different weight. The more time I spent with these characters, the more I realized that many of Cal’s choices, fears, and assumptions about himself had roots that traced back to Vivienne in ways I hadn’t originally planned.
None of that existed in a detailed outline.
Those discoveries happened while I was actively writing the book, which is one of the reasons I love the creative process as much as I do. Characters rarely introduce themselves all at once. More often, they reveal pieces of themselves gradually, and every now and then one of them decides to show you something that changes your understanding of the entire story.
Vivienne was that character for me.
Ironically, she also turned out to be much easier to write than I expected. Before I started the novel, I assumed the antagonist would be one of the most difficult people in the cast to fully understand. Instead, once I settled into her perspective and began to understand what drove her decisions, her actions felt surprisingly consistent.
To be clear, understanding a character and agreeing with a character are two very different things.
I don’t think readers are going to finish All the Quiet Things and immediately start a Vivienne fan club.
What fascinated me was the realization that she never viewed herself as the source of the damage she caused. In her mind, her choices were justified. Her actions made sense. She believed she was protecting what mattered to her, even when those choices came at someone else’s expense.
That’s often what makes a character compelling to write.
The most memorable villains rarely wake up every morning determined to become the villain of the story. They’re simply pursuing their own goals, defending their own beliefs, and convincing themselves that the consequences are someone else’s problem.
The Real Story Behind Jules
One of the easiest character names in the entire book came from a friendship that has been part of my life for more than twenty years.
Back in 2005, when my best friend and I were freshmen in high school, we got into an argument. I couldn’t tell you what caused it now. Whatever happened felt incredibly important at the time because that’s how being fourteen works, but I’d be willing to bet it was something that would seem completely ridiculous to us today.
What I do remember is what came afterward.
During our fight, she wrote a poem about us and gave us fictional names. In that poem, she was Jules and I was Sophia. For some reason, those names stuck with me long after the argument itself faded into memory.
Life moved on.
We graduated.
We grew up.
We survived all the things that have a way of pulling people in different directions over the years, yet somehow our friendship remained one of the constants. More than two decades later, here we are in 2026, still talking, still laughing, and still showing up for each other through all the different versions of life we’ve lived since high school.
When it came time to create Del’s best friend, I never really considered calling her anything else.
Jules had already been living in my head for years.
There’s something special about being able to weave pieces of your real life into a story, especially when those pieces represent people who have walked alongside you for such a long time. Every time I see Jules on the page, I’m reminded of a friendship that survived teenage drama, adulthood, careers, marriages, children, and everything else life managed to throw our way.
Considering the fact that the name started in a poem written during a freshman-year argument, I’d say things worked out pretty well.
(Us circa 2004 or 2005; I can’t quite remember the date.)
The Most Personal Character In The Book Isn’t Human
Out of every character in All the Quiet Things, the one closest to my heart might be Comet.
Readers know him as Cal and Del’s dog, but his story began long before this book ever existed. Comet was inspired by my real dog, a sweet Vizsla who shared our lives for more than nine years and left a mark on our family that I don’t think will ever fully fade.
We lost him in November 2023 to liver failure.
Even now, almost three years later, writing those words still hurts.
Long before Mr. West and I became parents, Comet was our first baby. He was there during those early years when we were building a life together and trying to figure out adulthood as we went. He moved with us, sat beside us through career changes, and eventually greeted both of our children when we carried them through the front door for the first time after bringing them home from the hospital.
For all the time he was ours, he wasn’t simply a pet. He was woven into the fabric of our everyday lives so completely that I never really stopped to imagine what life would look like without him.
Then one day, we had to.
Anyone who has loved a dog that deeply understands how strange grief can be. Their absence shows up in places you don’t expect. A routine changes. A corner of the house feels different. You catch yourself looking for them before remembering they’re gone.
The months after losing Comet were incredibly difficult for me. I carried that sadness around much longer than I anticipated, and for a while it felt like everything reminded me of him.
Somewhere in the middle of writing All the Quiet Things, I realized I had an opportunity to give a small piece of him a permanent home inside the story.
The way Cal and Del adopt Comet in the book is almost exactly how Mr. West and I adopted our Comet in 2013. There are a few details that changed for storytelling purposes, but the heart of that experience came directly from our own lives. As I wrote those scenes, memories I hadn’t visited in a while started resurfacing. I remembered bringing him home. I remembered watching him grow from an energetic puppy into the dog who would spend years faithfully following our family through every season of life.
What surprised me most was how healing the process became.
Every day I sat down to write, I got to spend a little time with him again. Not in the heartbreaking final chapter of his life, but in the happy memories that came before it. The memories of muddy paws, ridiculous antics, unconditional love, and all the small moments that eventually become the story of a family.
Del calls him “Little Comet” in the book, which was my nickname for him in real life. That phrase always made Mr. West laugh because there was absolutely nothing little about a seventy-pound Vizsla, but no matter how big he got, he was still my Little Comet.
Including him in this story gave me a chance to honor him in a way I never expected when I first started writing the book.
Years from now, readers may not know where Comet came from. They may never realize how much of him was real.
I’ll know, though.
And every time I see his name on those pages, I’ll think of the dog who helped raise our family and the gift of having loved him for as long as we did.
(The day we brought him home.)
(I got to dress him up often, he’d let me and not chew the costumes.)
(One of his last pictures before his liver failed.)
The Heart Of The Story Was Always Connection
People often ask what All the Quiet Things is about, and while romance is certainly part of the answer, it’s never the first thing that comes to mind when I think about the story.
What stays with me are the relationships.
The friendships that become lifelines. The people who walk into your life unexpectedly and somehow become family. The moments when someone feels seen, understood, and accepted in ways they didn’t think were possible.
Those are the things I’ve always been drawn to as a reader.
Some of my favorite books aren’t memorable because of a particular plot twist or grand romantic gesture. I remember them because of the connections between the characters and the way those relationships evolve over the course of the story. Watching people learn to trust each other, lean on each other, and build something meaningful together will never stop being interesting to me.
That naturally found its way into All the Quiet Things.
Cal and Del’s relationship is at the center of the book, but they don’t exist in a vacuum. Their friendships matter. Their family relationships matter. The community around them matters. Every one of those connections helps shape the people they become.
Maybe that’s why the story still feels so personal to me.
At its core, it has always been about finding the people who make life a little lighter to carry.
Looking Back At My Debut
Time has a funny way of changing what feels important.
When All the Quiet Things was getting ready to launch, my attention was consumed by edits, formatting, release plans, and all the countless details that suddenly seem urgent when you’re preparing to send your first book into the world. At the time, every decision felt enormous.
Years later, those are rarely the things I think about.
My mind goes to the characters instead. I think about Del, Cal, Jules, and yes, even Vivienne. I think about the pieces of my own life that somehow found their way into the story without me fully realizing it at the time. A friendship that began in high school ended up inspiring one of my favorite characters. A dog I still miss every day became part of the book’s heart. Even the mistakes I made along the way have become some of my favorite stories to tell.
One reviewer mentioned that the writing felt lyrical, with a lot of similes and metaphors woven throughout Del’s perspective.
They’re absolutely right.
If I picked up that manuscript today, there are probably places where I’d make different choices. I might pull back in a few scenes. I might approach certain passages differently now that I’ve written more books and spent more time developing my voice.
At the same time, I have no desire to go back and rewrite it.
Part of what makes a debut special is that it captures a specific moment in an author’s life. That book reflects who I was as a writer when I sat down to tell Del’s story, and I wanted readers to experience the world through her eyes. When I wrote the next book from Cal’s perspective, I intentionally approached the voice differently because they are different people with different ways of seeing the world.
Could I make All the Quiet Things better now?
Maybe.
Could I make it different?
Absolutely.
But different and better aren’t always the same thing.
Perfect was never the goal.
My goal was to write a story about complicated people learning how to love, heal, trust, and find their way back to themselves. I wanted to create characters who felt real and relationships readers could become invested in. Most of all, I wanted to finish the book that had been living inside my head for so long.
I did that.
For all its imperfections, All the Quiet Things remains the book I needed to write.
And if you’ve spent time with Del, Cal, Jules, Vivienne, Comet, and everyone else who lives within those pages, thank you for taking that journey with me. I’d love to know what surprised you most about the story, or which character stayed with you long after you reached the final page.
If the book is still waiting on your TBR, I hope you’ll give it a chance someday.
There’s a little piece of my heart tucked between those pages.
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With so much love,
Briar