Fading Lights is 3 years old this month (Originally published May 14, 2019).
I have been a writer since I was 8. It took me 29 years to get over my fear of success and self-publish this trilogy. I chased Traditional publishing for a long time but when I wrote this series I knew it was too important to wait on the slow wheels of that system to turn AND that they would make me take too much of the important dark stuff out of it.
Make no mistake these books are dark. They are apocalyptic horror. They have slavery, rape, incest, child injury/harm, abduction, sex trafficking, abuse of all sorts.
Why?
I will tell you why. I didn't write it to sensationalize these things or as a 'thrill'.
I wrote these things because real people are living through these things every day. Society has swept them under the rug and made the topics taboo to talk about (hence why Taboo is NAMED that, I threw everything I could think of that wasn't 'PC' to talk about into it). This is hurting the silent victims in this situation.
Many isolated victims are not allowed contact with the outside world. Some of them don't even know that what they are living through is wrong/bad, they are brainwashed to think it's normal. A common thread of escape among a lot of them though is they can read books. If no books show them that what they are living through is wrong, or the horrors of it to people who aren't living through it, how will they escape?
How will anyone believe them when they say these horrors exist if society refuses to admit that they do?
And there is another group of people. Those who I say live in the abyss. They are so far into depression/darkness/anxiety that they can't stand 'happy, fluffy' stories. They NEED stories about people suffering worse than they are to have a hope that they will survive what they're going through.
So, no. I will not stop writing the darkness. I will not stop writing for those who are voiceless and lost. I will not be censored just to be 'marketable'. I'm not in this to get rich. I'm in this to save those who no one else can reach.
I was driven to finish these and publish them like no other of my books. Someone in the world needs these. I hope that they are able to find them. I wish I had had books like this while I was growing up.
Hang in there, my lights. Don't let the darkness drown you. You're too important and I believe you can survive. I wish I could make it easier.
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