Why I Write in the Dark

There are things polite people are not supposed to say.

We are not supposed to admit how angry we are.

We are not supposed to wonder what we might do if there were no consequences. We are not supposed to be fascinated by power, or vengeance, or appetite. We certainly aren't supposed to look too closely at the people who take what they want and ask ourselves why they can.

Fiction gives us somewhere to put those thoughts.

I write dark stories because darkness gives us permission to examine things daylight prefers to tidy away.

The Monsters That Interest Me

The monsters that interest me aren't mindless creatures hiding under beds. They're intelligent. Organized. Civilized. They have rules. They have loyalties. They have appetites. They can behave beautifully and still be dangerous.

Sometimes they're easier to understand than the humans.

And sometimes you run across them in everyday life.

Sometimes you're in relationships with them. Sometimes for ten years. Sometimes twenty. And sometimes it's only after you're out that you can look back and understand what you were actually living with.

Distance Has a Way of Changing the View

Things you once explained away become harder to explain. Things you accepted as normal stop looking normal. You begin to recognize patterns you couldn't see while you were living inside them.

Maybe that's another reason I write about predators.

Fiction lets me recognize them sooner.

Power, Rules, and What Happens When They Break

I'm interested in power — who has it, who wants it, who thinks they deserve it, and what people become when they finally get enough of it.

I'm interested in the rules we create to control our worst instincts, and what happens when those rules stop working.

And yes, I'm interested in rage.

Not rage as spectacle. Not smashed dishes and screaming for the sake of screaming.

The quieter kind.

The kind that accumulates.

The kind that remembers.

The kind that can sit perfectly still at the dinner table.

The Freedom of the Page

There is something wonderfully freeing about putting that rage on a page.

Fiction lets us follow it into places we would never go ourselves. We can stand beside terrible people. We can understand them without forgiving them. We can want things for them that might make us uncomfortable if we said them aloud.

Then we can close the book and return to civilization.

Mostly.

Where The Kalos Chronicles Began

Grey House: The Feeding, the first book in The Kalos Chronicles, grew out of my fascination with those contradictions.

What if the predators among us weren't supernatural?

What if they had always been here?

What if they had built an entire civilization around controlling the very thing that made them dangerous?

And what happens when control begins to fail?

That is where I like my stories.

Somewhere between appetite and restraint.

Welcome to the dark.