Some days, being an author looks wonderfully mysterious.
Candlelight. Coffee. A dramatic playlist. Creating dangerous worlds filled with complicated people who make questionable decisions.
Other days, it’s me staring at a chapter thinking, Well… somebody created this problem.
Unfortunately, that somebody was me.
But that’s the part I love most. Taking broken characters, impossible choices, a little darkness, a lot of emotion, and slowly turning all of it into a story worth getting lost in.
So today, I’m back in the fictional chaos.
What are you reading while I’m causing problems for imaginary people?
The Aesthetic Versus the Actual Work
I love the atmosphere of writing. The moody music, the notes scattered across my desk, the coffee going cold because I forgot it existed—again. Those things make the work feel a little magical.
But the real magic is usually much less photogenic.
It is rewriting a scene until the character finally sounds like themselves. It is deleting a beautiful paragraph because it belongs in a different book. It is noticing that the emotional logic is wrong even when the sentences are technically fine.
There is no candle dramatic enough to fix a plot hole.
I have checked.
Why I Keep Coming Back
Still, I return to the page because eventually the pieces begin to connect. A character says the thing I did not know they needed to say. A scene that fought me for days suddenly reveals what it was missing. The fictional chaos develops a heartbeat.
That moment is worth the frustration that came before it.
Maybe that is the soft-heart part of all this. Beneath the danger, sharp edges, terrible decisions, and people who desperately need healthier coping mechanisms, I am always looking for the reason they keep trying. The small piece of hope they protect. The person they cannot quite stop caring about.
Dark stories work for me when the darkness makes that light matter more.
So yes: dark books, strong coffee, and a soft heart.
Sometimes.