“In the silence between screams, I found the weight of my own heart — fractured, trembling, but still beating for them.”
— Echoes of Despair
The Hollow That Became a Voice
I didn’t set out to write a story about despair.
I set out to write about love — the kind that refuses to die, even when everything else has.
But somewhere between the sleepless nights and the ghosts of my own decisions, despair found its way onto the page. It whispered through every keystroke, every revision, every quiet moment when the world outside the screen faded, and the world within it demanded something real.
Echoes of Despair was never just fiction to me. It was a mirror I didn’t want to look into — the reflection of a father trying to hold together pieces of a world he’d already lost.
When I wrote Xander Angel kneeling before the flames, pleading with gods he didn’t believe in, I was really writing about every time I felt powerless as a father. Every time I wondered if love was enough to protect the people who depended on me.
Excerpt from Echoes of Despair
“He screamed until his voice broke, but the darkness didn’t answer. It never did.
Only the echo of his children’s laughter remained, haunting the edges of memory — cruel, distant, beautiful. He reached for it, for them, but the air itself recoiled as if even the world had grown tired of his prayers.”
When people talk about “writing from the heart,” they make it sound clean.
But it isn’t. It’s raw and ugly — a bloodletting of memory and meaning.
I wrote Xander’s pain because I understood it.
The kind of pain that comes from loving deeply and failing loudly.
The kind of pain that makes you question if you deserve redemption, or if the story’s already decided for you.
There’s something about fatherhood that makes every mistake echo louder. Every choice feels like a domino in a hallway lined with memories — one wrong push, and everything you built comes crashing down.
So, I wrote.
Not to escape it, but to understand it.
To understand how a man could still choose to fight when the world keeps taking from him.
To understand how love — no matter how twisted or imperfect — could still be a weapon against despair.
Where the Darkness Teaches
There’s a strange thing that happens when you start writing your demons instead of running from them.
They stop being monsters.
They become lessons.
Each chapter became a form of self-reconciliation — a dialogue between who I was, who I am, and who I’m still trying to be.
Writing Xander’s story forced me to confront my own flaws as a father, my temper, my exhaustion, my silence. But it also reminded me of the moments that make it worth enduring — the small hands reaching out for reassurance, the unspoken trust in their eyes that says, you’re still my hero, even when you’re broken.
Despair, I learned, isn’t the enemy.
It’s the reminder that you still care enough to hurt.
The Cost of Carrying Hope
There were nights when I stared at the page and thought about giving up. Not just the writing — the whole damn thing.
But then I’d think about Xander, about how he never got to choose easy paths. About Logan, the son who mirrors every father’s silent fear: that one day, your children will have to heal from you.
And that’s when I realized something:
I wasn’t writing a tragedy. I was writing a resurrection.
Because every father who’s fallen still has a chance to rise.
Every mistake can still become a bridge, not a wall.
That’s what Echoes of Despair became — not a lament, but a promise.
A reminder that the light isn’t always kind, but it’s always there.
Excerpt from Echoes of Despair
“He no longer prayed for mercy.
Mercy was for those who hadn’t tasted loss.
He prayed only for time — time to find them, time to fix what he’d shattered, time to be something more than a ghost clinging to old hopes.”
What Lies Beneath the Echoes
Every story has ghosts — things we bury beneath our words. Mine just happen to scream a little louder.
And if you’ve ever lost yourself in the quiet ache between love and duty, between failure and forgiveness, maybe you’ll hear those echoes too.
Because Echoes of Despair isn’t just Xander’s story.
It’s mine.
It’s every parent who’s ever looked in the mirror and wondered if love is enough to hold back the dark.
It’s the proof that even broken hearts can still beat loud enough to shake the gates of despair.
Pull Quote
“Despair isn’t the absence of hope. It’s the weight that proves you still care.”
From the Author’s Desk
Every story begins in shadow. Some never leave it.
But this one — this one clawed its way toward the light.
If Echoes of Despair was about surviving the dark, then Echoes of Future Past is about confronting what waits on the other side of it.
I wrote these words as both confession and compass — for fathers, dreamers, and anyone who’s ever been haunted by love that refused to die.
Thank you for walking through the fire with me.
Your echoes make mine worth hearing.
— Brandon Fragale
Author of the Echoes Saga
Next in the Series
Up Next: “Building Evermore: The Anatomy of a Broken World”
A journey into the fractured world beyond the flame — where time bends, gods lie, and the ruins still remember who built them.