Why I Write Fiction of Beauty, Danger, and Transformation

A core part of my life has been learning how to be myself. That has not always been easy, and for a long time it did not even feel possible. Because of that, I think I am always writing toward the places people are told not to look too closely: pain, loneliness, longing, uncertainty, desire, change, the parts of a self or a life that others would rather flatten, fear, or dismiss. I am interested in finding beauty there, not because suffering is noble, but because even difficult things can hold tenderness, meaning, and the promise that they will not last forever. To me, beauty lives in the details people overlook, the small things that make a life feel like a life, and those are often the things that pull me into a story most deeply.

Danger matters to me for much the same reason. Life is dangerous, not only because of what the world does to us, but because being human means caring, wanting, risking, and continuing. In my fiction, danger can look like a sword, a wound, a haunted place, or a system pressing down on a person. It can also look like saying I love you. It can look like waking up in the morning and choosing to keep going when you would rather do anything else. Some stories ask for literal survival. Some ask for emotional risk. Most ask for both.

Transformation sits at the center of everything I write. It is there in survival, in grief, in queerness, in love, in power, in choosing what must be left behind, and in living with the consequences of that choice. It is there in becoming your own person, even when the world has tried to tell you who you should be. My being acearo and trans shapes that deeply. Growing up, I did not have the words for who or what I was. I only knew what I was not. I still think about how different things might have been if I had found more stories that said, plainly, that it was okay to be whoever or whatever you are, and that there were others like you, messy and human and imperfect, and that things could still turn out okay. A lot of what I write comes from that absence and from the desire to make something gentler, stranger, and truer in its place.

I write across genres because different stories require different forms. It really is that simple. But beneath those genre labels, my stories are connected by the same questions. They are about wanting something, especially something the world or society tells you that you are not allowed to have. They are about characters reaching toward connection, freedom, understanding, or survival, and what it costs them to do so. I tend to begin with an idea and then with characters, because for me the character is telling the story and I am just the one putting the words on the page. I spend a great deal of time building characters and worlds, but what matters most to me is that the story feels lived in, emotionally real, and capable of seeing the person reading it.

More than anything, I want readers to feel seen. Even in the middle of magic, danger, grief, devotion, or whatever else is happening, I want someone to find a piece of themselves in the story. I want queer readers especially to find characters who are not there to be reduced to a joke or a token, but who get to be full people: complicated, vulnerable, capable of hurting and being hurt, and still deserving of love, dignity, and change.

I am drawn, over and over, to stories that deepen on a second read, where the ending throws a new light backward and you can suddenly see the threads that were there all along. I love relationships that feel undeniable, the kind of closeness where two people would kiss if so inclined, not because romance is required, but because intimacy can take so many forms. Friends, lovers, enemies, people bound to each other by fate or circumstance or something harder to name, all of that interests me. I think that is part of why I keep returning to atmosphere, emotional tension, imagery, and relationships with equal seriousness. All of them matter. All of them help shape the story into the thing it is trying to become.

This is the kind of fiction I want to write: stories where beauty is never empty, danger is never only one thing, and transformation leaves its mark. Stories where queer people are allowed to be real. Stories where the emotional core matters as much as the magic, the setting, or the plot. Stories that can hold pain without reducing a life to it.

If that sounds like the kind of work you want to follow, I’m glad you’re here. You can keep up with updates, future projects, and release news by following along or joining the newsletter.

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Photo by Hans on Unsplash