writing journey

Story was my safety net growing up, and in the colorful in-between of reality and my imagination, I found comfort in the great pages of wonderful books. A book was the best of gifts to me. It gave me a chance to travel, learn, escape…to love, to fight for what was right. It offered me more than my every day.

Especially when my every day shifted more to criminal justice and figuring out ways to help the disenfranchised and ensure that every person has a fair shot under the law. As a then paralegal, I had high hopes for every client that walked through those doors.

But one fateful day, things changed.

A disgruntled client’s family member burst into the office. They demanded that things be done on their case. This wasn’t odd. The paralegal is often the one to take the brunt of the abuse; think of it as customer service on the front lines.

Yet when they promised to come back and shoot up the office, I was terrified. None of my education had prepared me on how to duck and dive, to potentially push heavy furniture around. So instead, we were sitting ducks with only one way out and all of the windows painted shut.

I panicked.

I took this fear home with me, and every day when I returned to the office, it gnawed at me. Would this be the day I’d die?

There was no plan on what to do, but my mind wouldn’t rest without something being done… and that is when I started writing. It began as a paranormal romance, but due to this trauma quickly shifted to something more sinister.

I needed to process the darkness.

Now, that's meant diving into the world of magic and the fantastical...  

But back then, well,  there would be more threats, and I’d be more prepared as I’d pour all of that angst into my fiction.

Processing my every day in a high-stress environment came a lot easier by my spending time creating characters and solving their problems. It empowered me and gave me hope, peace, and a way to express myself.

Although I left being a paralegal behind, I still find the sweet solace of storytelling to be my anchor.

I’m happy to say that the family member never returned with a weapon, and safeguards were put in place to protect the staff.

Oh, and the book that came out of this trauma is Deadly Sins under my pseudonym, Rayne Marrow.