Seven Things About What I Write

For no reason except that I like to talk about my characters, settings, and themes, I’ve put together this [hardly exhaustive] list of things you can find in my stories.

Look, it’s a list!My stories center around Baltimore.
Why? Because I’m from here. The city and its surroundings are a place filled with beauty and quirkiness that are often ignored in favor of focusing on the darker aspects, ones that get a disproportionate amount of screen time on TV shows and in movies. Those things are there, but it’s not all there is to Baltimore by far, and part of my goal is to rebalance things by telling hopeful stories set in a place that deserves them. Also, B’more has so many hidden treasures and interesting people. It’s the perfect place for a community of Fae to live without much notice.
Most of the places I mention in my books are real places, or based on real ones. I’m planning a video tour of Fae Baltimore at some point soon!My stories are hopeful. As I mentioned above, I write books where the characters – no matter what they’ve been through – tend to work toward positive change and helping each other. There’s room for forgiveness and transformation here, something that reflects my own stance on life but also serves as an option for folks who are tired of the preponderance of grim, heavy stories out there and want something that encourages them to look at the world with fresh eyes. I don’t shy away from tough and painful topics, but I address them with small, positive steps that anyone – not just magic wielders – can take.
It’s important for me to allow room for things like the possibility of redemption and the importance of community in these stories. My Fae characters are not inexplicable or confounding. In a lot of Faerie lore, the Fae are unpredictable, impossible to understand, without rhyme or reason to us mere mortals. In my stories, that’s not the case, or at least, not exactly the case,
The closer that the Eleriannan and Gwyliannan live to mortals, the more they seem to be like us, with concerns and motivations that mortals can comprehend. The ones that are more difficult to parse are the older ones who have begun to separate themselves from the mortal world. And of course, there are beings like the Elementals, which not even the Fae can claim to understand.
But one of the parts I love the most about writing my Fae is that despite being magical creatures who have lived well beyond the life span of the mortals they associate with now, they still struggle with emotions and relationships and maneuvering through the world around them. The magic they have solves some problems and creates others. They make plenty of mistakes, and also beneficial decisions. They are knowable – and loveable – because despite not being like us, they really are like us in all the ways that count. My characters care about taking care of the people and environment around them. There are plenty of social and environmental issues that are important to Baltimore that the characters address on a regular basis. Homelessness, racism, gentrification, pollution, poverty, environmental responsibility, justice, healthcare, class, and inequality are just some of the topics that characters touch on.
They model helpful actions, too – especially Vali, an activist who puts her energy into using her magic to protect community projects and organizing cleanup sessions at the local waterways. The Gwyliannan contribute to their area by magically protecting the neighborhood from crime and other intrusions.
I want to leave readers feeling like they can do more if they want and there’s a place for them out there with others who work towards positive goals. I like to refer to Faerie tropes and give quiet shout-outs to stories that came before mine. I bury references to all the lore, ballads, poems, and classic literature about the Fae that I grew up with, as well as nods to works by more contemporary authors that I’ve loved, throughout my stories. Sometimes it’s very subtle, other times quite overt if you’re familiar. It’s both a tribute and a way of connecting my tales to the bigger collection of lore out there. Also, it’s fun!I make up my own creatures and lore. Eleriannan, Gwyliannan, and Grimshaw. The Lady of the City. The Nyxen, Ffyn, Arswyd, ArDonnath. Those all came from my own head, though of course with plenty of precedent from the classics mentioned previously. I feel like a thread of truth runs through every interpretation of various magical beings and creatures, and mine are just one version of things that can feel both unique and familiar all at once.My characters are a little too real! I’ve been told time and again that they feel like people that my readers know and love like old friends. And to be truthful, they feel like that to me, too, even the new ones that show up unbidden to take over my stories. [I’m looking at you, Denny.]
I’m often asked if they’re modeled after people I know and the answer is both yes and no. Certain people definitely had some influence over the beginnings of some of the folks in my stories, but once I started writing them they began to get minds and wills of their own and often will surprise me with some of the choices and directions they take.
It’s quite delightful.
Because of that, they get deeper and more complicated as the books progress, and that makes them much more interesting to work with. They show up in my dreams as often as they do on the page, and I’m fully expecting to round a corner one day and run headfirst into Lucee or Merrick or Denny.

There’s actually a lot more I could say about what I write – and why – but I’ll leave it at seven for now. What’s most important is that these books are intensely personal to me, and filled with details that I feel good about. I hope you enjoy them too.