I'm going to break a personal rule to talk about my first series and be a bit of a spoiler here. If you've read my books, then you'll know the themes and plots but I also hope to encourage people to read my books who haven't. The only real way to do that is to explore deeply and interest others in the themes.
When She first appears, she is a sort of narrator and observer. Rather than taking on the sole role of author, I always saw her as an entity that was leading me through this world. But she was no god, known and powerful to these people. She was a wandering spirit, a personality full of longing. To touch, to feel, to be amongst the people whose lives she was observing.
Now the 'writer' of these books, to the people who needed their history, is Krose, a character who starts out as a thief, a never do well, who doesn't leap into action until a determined woman in a shredded wedding dress stumbles along. Yet, he is connected to She, in that their perspectives are eerily similar. When the world shifts and She becomes the Goddess Kalhmera, she even wants to put her hand in the writing of his books...
The Goddess Kalhmera endeavors to be a benevolent and good influence, but being corporeal and affected by the world she becomes a part of, she inevitably can also be corrupted by it. She is no longer the elusive She, but an entity with a name and DNA.
Like many of the villains in my stories, she is both to blame and not. It is often a quest for power or greed or notoriety or even something as innocent as wanting only happiness that can lead anyone down selfish or evil paths. Evil, like trouble, tends to find and pull anyone it snares down a rapid and inescapable path. Or so it seems. Escaping evil is often as simple as rolling out of bed, but inertia in a state of pleasure is the only thing keeping us from a simple freeing movement.
She is me, in a way. In many states of loneliness, yearning and empowerment, She is liable to be freed by villains or detained by heroes. She is affected by her world because She, like any other, is affected by expectation and rebellion and even inertia. There is not really such a thing as doing nothing since there are forces always at work, thoughts, hopes, doubts, that keep us moving and growing at our stillest.
I do hope everyone will give my books a try. I realize by introducing erotic and violent themes I'll lose people, but I wanted to write my books honestly and, to write honestly, there is a reality of humanity that must be uncomfortable.
I don't want to be the sort to enforce realities like asexuality or transexuality as tokenism either. There may be stories where the characters I explore take that route but I don't want it to be trashy and heavy handed like a neon sign either. Themes like that can easily become gaudy as they become affected by stereotypes rather than natural truths. In my second series, there is a non-binary character, not because they are consciously both/neither accepting/rejecting gender, but because they don't really care how they are perceived. The reason that is natural is because I was able to relate that as a feeling that I had as a child. I still don't get offended if I am mistaken for a man.
Now, being treated like a child? That's still a pet peeve. I'm still younger than I look and it does rankle when someone assumes they're my senior when they aren't. But that's another story.
Well, I sincerely hope UnHeard wants to return as my muse. Mentally, i know how UnHeard and the series itself will end. It isn't that I have exhausted the love for this unfinished series. It can just be overwhelming to gather and translate the details and focus it into a story. I'm also hoping that making dolls for some of the characters leads me there too. The quarantine is playing some games with my head and it's very difficult to write at the moment. However, it is still a strong hope that I find whatever I need within to finish this series in the next couple of years. Finishing a series is such a high, I cant describe it. It's when i can finally resolve the characters that never really leave me.
Hell, I haven't read my first series since I edited them prior to publishing, but I still visit it mentally plenty. In truth, I don't want to continue to restrain it to the words I had once chosen, but to visit it like a memory instead.
Hope you've enjoyed my trip through nostalgia and can someday discuss your impressions with me. Also hoping you're not shackled mentally into only seeing it as erotica. I mean, I'm still a geeky nerd at heart.
I do a whole lotta hoping. You should too!
