What Kind of Stories Are You Really Looking For?

Some readers pick up a book and know within the first chapter: this is what I’ve been looking for.

Not because it’s comfortable, but because it’s honest. Because the characters feel real, the situations don’t resolve neatly, and the moral questions don’t have a single right answer.

Whether I mean to or not, those are always the stories I end up writing.

If You're Looking for Stories About Second Chances

Take Reinhardt. He carries a past that doesn’t let go, choices that haunt him. The story doesn’t ask you to forgive him or condemn him. It asks you to sit with the weight of what he’s done and watch him try to build something better anyway.

That’s a second chance. Not the Hollywood version, where redemption comes wrapped in a bow. The real version, where you carry your mistakes forward and try to do better with the time you have left.

Or Ruby Draker. In Finding Ruby Draker, her family is murdered, and the only way to keep her alive is to erase the life she once knew. She doesn't transform into someone new; she slowly pieces together who she is beneath the identity she's been forced to live. Her second chance comes from finally facing herself in the wreckage.

I think that's why second chances fascinate me. They're rarely about starting over. They're about deciding what kind of person you're willing to become after life refuses to give you a clean slate.

If You're Looking for Characters Who Feel Real

You’ve met people in real life who surprised you, who turned out to be more complex than you first thought, who had reasons for their behavior you didn’t see coming.

That’s what I want my characters to feel like.

Grace Walker knows something no one else can explain. It would have been easy to write her as someone completely certain of herself because she has this extraordinary gift.

But certainty isn't what interested me.

She's brave one moment and full of doubt the next. She questions herself even while trusting what she knows. Like most of us, she wants to do the right thing, but she's never completely sure what that is.

Ruby is vulnerable, scared, and piecing together who she is while everyone around her seems to have their own agenda. You’re protective of her but may also feel frustrated with her choices at the same time.

That’s the point. Real people contain contradictions. They act out of fear and love simultaneously. They want to be better and keep making the same mistakes. My characters do the same because anything less would feel dishonest.

I don't trust perfect characters. I trust people who contradict themselves.

If You're Looking for Difficult Questions

I don’t write stories where you know who to root for from page one.

In Shadows in the Aftermath, no one gets to make the "right" decision.
They're simply trying to make the least devastating one.

I think that's much closer to real life than stories where the heroes always know what to do.

In Underneath the Fireflies, Grace Walker has to balance what she knows to be real with what others can accept. Her gift isolates her even as it compels her to act. Who does she trust with the truth? How does she solve a murder when her only evidence is supernatural? The story doesn’t tell you, it shows you the situation and lets you wrestle with it yourself.

I've never been interested in proving one person was right and another was wrong. I'm much more interested in what happens after the choice has been made, and everyone has to live with it.

If You're Looking for Hope That Feels Real

I don’t write about characters who bounce back.

I write about characters who break, who bend, and who keep moving forward anyway, sometimes barely, sometimes with pieces missing.

In Shadows in the Aftermath, the characters deal with trauma that doesn’t heal on a convenient timeline. They make progress, then slip backward. They find strength, then lose it again. Survival isn’t pretty or inspirational the way we’re used to seeing it.

Fireflies don't light the whole sky. They appear for a moment, vanish, and reappear somewhere unexpected. You can't catch them. You can't hold them. But you know they're there. And somehow, that matters.

That's the kind of hope I'm drawn to. Not the kind that saves you all at once, but the kind that shows up just long enough to keep you moving. A memory, a person, a sliver of something that refuses to die.

It's why I wrote Underneath the Fireflies. The characters don't overcome through willpower alone. They find tiny reasons to keep going, and sometimes that's enough.

That’s what resilience actually looks like. Not triumph. Persistence.

Maybe that's why those stories stay with me. They're less interested in extraordinary people than in ordinary people who simply refuse to stop moving forward.

What You’ll Carry With You After

When you pick up one of my books, you’re signing up for something specific: discomfort, conflicting feelings about characters you thought you understood, endings that don’t wrap up neatly but stay with you days later.

If you want escapism, you’ll find it, my stories are immersive. But they won’t let you escape the hard questions.

And if you want inspiration, you’ll find that too. Not the motivational poster kind. The quiet, persistent kind. The kind that says: people survive terrible things. People keep going. People find meaning even in darkness.

What I’m really after is this: I want you to finish one of my books and feel understood. Like someone else sees the complexity you see in the world. Like your own conflicted feelings about people and situations make sense.

When Reinhardt struggles with his past, you might see your own regrets reflected back. When Ruby's world is torn apart and she has to rebuild her sense of self, you might recognize your own moments of losing everything and starting over. When the characters in Shadows of the Aftermath try to rebuild after trauma, you might feel seen in your own process of healing.

That’s what good fiction does. It shows you that other people wrestle with the same questions. That ambiguity is normal. That it’s okay not to have all the answers.

The Only Question That Matters

Before you pick up one of my books, ask yourself one thing: Do I want to be challenged?

Do I want characters who frustrate me sometimes? Endings that make me think instead of endings that let me exhale? Discomfort in service of something real?

If the answer is yes, you’re exactly the reader I’m writing for.

If the answer is no, that’s completely fine. There are wonderful stories that offer comfort without the weight. You should read those.

But if you’ve been nodding along, if this whole post has felt like someone finally naming what you’ve been looking for in fiction, then these are your kind of stories.

Somewhere out there is a reader who’s been searching for exactly this: books that take them seriously, that match the complexity of their inner life, that don’t offer false comfort or easy resolution.

If that’s you, I think you’ll know which one to start with.