Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I’m an accidental author and a survivor of childhood abuse and sexual assault. Trauma, major depression, anxiety, and PTSD were the results of a stressful start. Years ago, my therapist taught me about exposure therapy, but I struggled to devise a strategy. See, exposure therapy is a technique where you slowly approach the source of your trauma over time to overcome your fears, but the kind of issues I ended up with weren’t something I could physically address. That was when I experimented with writing for the first time. I quickly realized I could provide a controlled environment for myself to push my limits by exposing my characters to similar traumas and working to overcome them. During the journey, I learn more about myself and come to realizations that explain a great deal about why I feel the way I do. It helps desensitize me and lessen my suffering. As I have conditions including hEDS, POTS, ADHD, and more, I incorporate characters with these as a coping mechanism. It’s a battle every day, but I’ve never been one to give up or surrender my autonomy.
Tell us about a bit about your book.
This fantasy romance is about a young woman named Ragna who belongs to a pack of wolf-shifters, people who can turn into wolves. Now, the Moon Goddess gives everyone a soulmate upon their eighteenth birthday, but when Ragna comes of age, she is somehow paired with all the single men in the realm. Because the men start to fight over her and the women try to kill her, Ragna is banished. She then encounters the Sky Gods who tell her the Moon Goddess is missing, and because Ragna is the last person she was working with, the young woman must find her.
While Ragna looks for answers, King Zorian decides that in order to restore order to his kingdom, he must kill her. When he captures her, the Sun God interferes and aggressively reinforces Ragna’s mission by making King Zorian her champion and protector. So, they set off together, and during this quest to find the Moon Goddess, both Ragna and Zorian learn about and from each other. Not only do they eventually learn how to forgive, but they discover how finding peace can help them grow into the best versions of themselves. Beneath it all, this particular story focuses on coping with feeling hunted and how my anger about the past never allowed me to find peace. Zorian represents that anger, and Ragna embodies the driving force of therapy.
Have you always wanted to become a writer?
Oh no, I’ve never even taken a single creative writing course, though I’ve always done well in my English classes. Writing was the last of the arts I ever imagined myself doing. With two bachelor’s degrees in fine arts and animation, and a minor in electronic music, I’d aimed for a career in film or games, but that just wasn’t where I ended up. Illustrating and music composition is another form of storytelling, so I think that helped me step into writing and provide momentum for my self-educating. Either way, shockingly, I now feel like it’s where I’m meant to be.
What has helped or hindered you most when writing a book?
Self-care has always been a critical part of the process, the help against the hindrance of trauma and medical conditions. Approaching my trauma requires building resilience ahead of time, so I have to make sure I’m rested, fed, and managing my chronic pain. It means staying on top of my medication, therapy tools, and minimizing the impact of anxiety and depression. It’s about making the process of writing as easy as possible so I can focus on the therapy, which can be mentally and physically taxing.
What inspired the idea for your book?
As I mentioned, The Mistake and the Lycan King was written as exposure therapy to process trauma, and when I learned about the fantasy romance genre, it seemed like the safest place to focus on my treatment. The medieval period allowed me to push the narrative to a safe distance, and the romance, the spice, allowed me to address my struggles with intimacy. I wouldn’t be able to write in a modern period; it’d be too close to home. Adding fantasy species like werewolves and dragons allowed me to dive into intense, raw emotions, and the control I had over it all allowed me to either pull punches or test my current limitations. I grew up reading epic fantasies, and I discovered that creating lore and magic systems—like Eddings and Nix did so well—was another nice buffer that gave me small breaks from challenging chapters.
What advice would you give a writer working on their first book?
This is a bit tough because authors write for so many different reasons. Generally speaking, I would encourage them to embrace the topics they are passionate about, have fun, and try not to get distracted by what they think will sell or rely on a trope checklist. I think readers can tell when you’ve enjoyed writing your novel. Passion shows and they will see your work truly shine and claim its own unique corner in the industry.
What is the most valuable piece of advice you’ve been given about
writing?
What stuck with me the most was advice about the arts in general. I’ve heard that Leonardo da Vinci once said, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” There is a kind of paralysis that can occur when writing a debut novel, an all-consuming worry that the writing and story must be perfect. At some point, in order to start your publishing journey, you have to be willing to let go and not let fear hold you hostage. It doesn’t have to be “perfect” to be amazing. There’s no such thing as a perfect novel anyway. The more you can write and let go, the more you will grow, not just in skill but in confidence, and that can feed a life well worth living.
Where do you get your information or ideas for your books?
Whenever I start a new novel, I think of an aspect of my trauma I need to address, like what I call ‘ghost hands,’ which is a trauma-born sensation of being touched when no one is actually around. As I write, I do a lot of research on whatever ideas come to mind. Book 2 of Healing Fate, The Dragon Knight and the Coveted, contains my favorite profound realization from my research to this day.
Elpis is a pleasure slave who was liberated by a knight, and she suffers from the same ‘ghost hands.’ It’s like, for Elpis and me, our skin contains memories, making us feel dirty, stained, and violated.
I learned while researching that at my character’s age, skin renews itself—the cells shedding and being replaced—over the course of a month. At one point, to comfort the traumatized Elpis, her knight tells her this and then says, “It means that in a month or two, all your skin will have never known an unwanted touch. The skin that remembers the mansion will be completely gone.”
This research ended up providing a big step in my healing, it was a profound discovery that just came from the process of writing and researching whatever topics organically pop up. For me, it’s been years since the abuse, and my skin has regrown many times. It provided a psychological shield for me, something that has lessened the sensations, dulled them where they’re not as intense.
This is an aspect that is unique about my novels. The reader discovers these concepts, these profound realizations, at the same point I do, so they are witnessing the therapy as it naturally unfolds. Readers sharing their own healing from my novels has been one of the most rewarding parts about this journey. I didn’t have to go alone as I’d feared.