What Would Make You Say Yes?

It is easy to look at someone else's choices from a safe distance and wonder why they didn't simply walk away.

I have never found that particularly interesting.

What interests me is why they stayed.

Human beings are curious creatures. We're tactile. We're driven by desire, experience and the persistent suspicion that the thing we don't do may become the thing we regret.

We want to know what something feels like. We want to know what happens next. We want the experience, especially when it feels extraordinary enough that we may never be offered anything quite like it again.

Sometimes saying no protects us. Sometimes it simply leaves us wondering.

That very human impulse is important in The Kalos Chronicles.

What happens when something extraordinary appears in front of you? Perhaps it's beautiful. Perhaps it makes you feel desired in a way you haven't felt in years. Perhaps it offers pleasure, freedom, adventure, or simply an experience unlike anything you've known before.

You may know there's a risk and want it anyway.

I don't think that makes you foolish. I think it makes you human.

Knowing something may be dangerous doesn't make desire disappear. Neither does intelligence, experience or good judgment. Sometimes we know considerably more than we should need to know and still find ourselves wondering whether the experience might be worth the risk.

And sometimes we don't know there's a risk at all.

The Kalos understand this about us.

They don't have to create our curiosity or teach us desire. We bring those things with us. They have simply had a very long time to understand what humans want, what we reach for, and what might make us take one more step when walking away would probably be safer.

That doesn't make desire a character flaw.

I don't want you reading Grey House: The Feeding and judging a human character because they didn't simply say no. I want you close enough to understand the yes.

Maybe you would say no.

Maybe you wouldn't.

Maybe you would tell yourself you were only going to find out what it felt like. Maybe you would be absolutely certain you could enjoy the experience and walk away afterward. Or maybe what was being offered would matter enough that, even knowing the danger, you would decide it was worth finding out.

That's part of being alive. We experience things. We touch them. We taste them. We take chances because sometimes the possibility of never knowing feels worse than the possibility that we might regret finding out.

The Kalos know that too.

So I'm not going to tell you not to enter Grey House.

In fact, I'm hoping you do.

Come inside. Look around. Stay as long as you like. The doors aren't locked.

The Kalos understand what we want.

The more interesting question is whether we understand how much we want it.

— Antonia Portage

Grey House: The Feeding, Book One of The Kalos Chronicles, is coming January 6, 2027.