How Killian and Lark Insisted on Existing

 Killian and Lark didn't arrive neatly.  They weren't gently dropped into my hands like one might like to imagine characters are given to an author.  It was more like the Frankenstein like world.  Rainy days, the crackle of static electricity and lighting.  I wouldn't be surprised if someone, somewhere, shouted "Give my creation liiiiiiiiiife!"

Something out of this set.  The TNT Frankenstein movie is extremely obscure, but sometimes you can still find the DVD online for a decent price.  I lived for this movie when I was nine/ten.

Oddly enough the idea came out of someone's irritation.  I forget the user name but I remember reading a persons rant about a supposed villain having morals.  Their argument was that if a character wasn't completely awful and the most horrible person alive, they somehow didn't count as a villain at all.

That complaint stuck with me for far longer than it really had any right to.

For reasons only known to my ND brain, my mind went straight to Robin Hood.  A character who steals, breaks laws, causes problems, and yet is the hero.  That led to a question that wouldn’t let go: What if there were a Robin Hood figure who wasn’t tidy or romanticized? What if she were clever, frustrating, and very much doing things her own way?

That’s when Lark announced her presence.

She arrived almost fully formed, scribbled into existence with a few quick notes and a very rough (and admittedly badly done) sketch.  I wanted her to stand out immediately, visually and conceptually, so I gave her a red cloak.  Red is a dangerous color.  It draws the eye and it refuses to blend in.  Years of studying art whispered, Do it!

Lark wasn’t meant to be subtle.  She wasn’t meant to be punished for being clever, either.  She treats rules more like suggestions.  Sometimes they're useful, other times ignorable and she has reasons for what she does that don’t always announce themselves upfront.

Shortly after she appeared, Killian arrived.

He was…insistent.

Killian made it very clear that he was not going to be left out of this story.  I hadn’t planned on writing an assassin at all, and I certainly hadn’t planned on writing a particular kind of assassin.  I didn’t want him to be sleek and anonymous or secretly soft in predictable ways.  So I started tweaking.

Killian hates terrible décor.  He has strong opinions about candles, clutter, and restraint.  He also has rules about who he will and won’t harm.  Certain people are off-limits.  Children, for example.  The highly sought-after interior designer Harlow, however, is not.  Mimes remain…debatable.

Giving Killian this one weakness, this deeply specific, slightly ridiculous line he will absolutely not ignore, made him far funnier than I expected.  It also made him more dangerous in a quieter way.  He isn’t chaotic.  He’s convinced he’s right.  And that certainty creates its own kind of trouble.

As I kept writing, both characters began to surprise me.

Lark developed secrets I hadn’t planned for.  Killian revealed limits I didn’t expect.  Scenes veered off in directions I hadn’t outlined, but that felt truer than anything I could have forced.  I learned, once again, a familiar lesson: sometimes you guide the characters, and sometimes they guide you instead.

Killian and Lark exist because I followed that instinct.  Because I let a complaint turn into curiosity, and curiosity turn into play.

They’re inconvenient.  They collide.  They misbehave.

And honestly?  I wouldn’t have them any other way.

Sometimes less IS more

When I first had this scene in my head, it was enormous.  Ginormous, even.  Do the cool kids still say "Ginormous?"  Why does this feel like the start of a "Back in my day..." statement?

In my original idea Killian was waving his arms about, there was pacing, maybe even a raised voice.  In my imagination he was off delivering a full, impassioned rant to the entire room.  He was winning an argument not just against the people in it, but the furniture, the lighting, and the very concept of bad taste itself.  It was theatrical.  It was funny.  It was also doing far, far too much.

And then I realized something important.  That version wasn't nearly as funny.

Volume was doing Killian no favors.  The more loudly he reacted, the more ordinary the scene became.  What made him work wasn't outage but his certainty.  The humor sharpened when he treated the situation as entirely reasonable, even when saying deeply unreasonable things.  He spoke as though his logic were unimpeachable, as though the room was wrong for simply existing the way it did.

So I had to let him calm down and everything got worse.  In the best possible way.

Letting Killian fuss with the little details, derail himself with side arguments, and then calmly circle back to what offended him, it made the scene far funnier than any rant could have.  His restraint became the joke itself.  His seriousness turned the absurd into something sharper, more precise.

So I scaled it down.  Scaled him down.  I took away the shouting.  I gave him small, meticulous actions instead of grand gestures.  And in doing so I found the scene misbehaved quietly.

It turned out that subtlety didn't make the moment smaller.  If anything, it made the scene far more dangerous.

Is it wrong I'm low key jealous someone thought of this crazy idea first?

Enjoy my excerpt.

“I hardly see how that’s a disqualifier,” Killian said sharply. He adjusted the infant’s blanket with unnecessary precision, smoothing out a wrinkle that offended him on mere principle.

“Girls can be excellent assassins. They have far better reach when they’re underestimated. Far more patience. And they don’t announce themselves by knocking things over.” He flicked a glance at Lord Whitcombe. “I tried opening an assassin school for girls. But apparently ‘after school knives’ alarmed some parents.”

He paused, his gaze sliding inexorably back to the glove.

“Anyway, where was I? Oh yes—who decorated this room?”

How Halloween Made Me the Pumpkin Queen

Some kids love Halloween because of the candy.

Some love it because they get to stay up late.

I loved it because it was the one day a year when being strange felt like permission instead of a liability.

As a child, Hallowe'en wasn’t just a holiday to me.  It was a small, glowing pocket of safety.  For one night, the things I was drawn to didn’t need justification.  Costumes were encouraged, expected even.  Imagination was encouraged.  Darkness was playful instead of threatening.  Being different wasn’t something to explain; it was the entire point.

I didn’t have to soften myself. I didn’t have to behave.

I could be a witch, a ghost, a creature from a book I loved.  I could put on a costume and step into a version of myself that felt truer than the everyday one.  No one asked why I liked those things. No one told me they were too much, too weird, or too serious.

Five-year-old me very excited about an awesomely carved pumpkin!

Halloween said: Yes. All of that belongs here.

Looking back, I can see how important that was.  Childhood doesn’t always come with language for neurological difference or sensitivity or imagination that runs ahead of social rules.  What it does come with is instinct and the quiet knowledge of where you feel most like yourself.  For me, that place smelled like fallen leaves and candle smoke and sugar.  It looked like pumpkins glowing in the dark.

Halloween gave me a framework for something I didn’t yet know how to name: identity as play, as choice, as reclamation.

So it makes sense, I think, that when someone later tried to use “pumpkin” as an insult, it didn’t land the way they expected.  The word already meant something to me.  It was associated with joy, mischief, survival, and the freedom to be strange on purpose.

Calling myself the Pumpkin Queen wasn’t just a joke.  It was a recognition.  A way of honoring that younger version of myself who waited all year for permission to exist out loud.

Halloween was the first place I learned that transformation could be temporary and still matter.  That you could step into another skin and learn something true.  That darkness didn’t have to be cruel to be powerful. That stories could live in costumes and rituals and shared belief, even if only for a night.

Those lessons followed me into writing.

I write stories that flirt with the uncanny.  I’m drawn to characters who exist at the edges of what’s acceptable.  I like humor mixed with shadow, tenderness braided with defiance.  I like stories that say: you are allowed to be this way.

The Pumpkin Queen isn’t about ruling.  Not really.

She’s about remembering.

Remembering the joy of being unafraid for a moment.

Remembering that weirdness can be a shelter.

Remembering that survival sometimes looks like celebration.

Halloween taught me that identity can be something you choose, not just something you’re assigned. Writing taught me that you can keep choosing it, year after year, page after page.

The pumpkins are still glowing.

Painted by yours truly at HandMod.

The crown still fits.

And I’m still writing my way back to that doorbell-lit night, where being myself felt like magic.

A First Glimpse

Some stories announce themselves loudly.  They arrive with genre labels, clear heroes, and tidy expectations.

This one didn’t.

This story I've been working on lately crept up on me sideways.  It's equal parts romantic comedy, character study, and a problem of my own making.  At its center are two people who never should've met, and who would most likely insist at great length, that the meeting was a mistake.

Killian is an assassin with a rathe specific set rules and a disdain for gaudy decor.

Lark is a thief who treats rules more as suggestions.  They're sometimes useful, ignorable at other times.

They collide because of a theft.

They continue colliding because neither of them is willing to yield ground.

They absolutely do not intend to fall in love.

This isn't a sleek romance, it's inconvenient and occasionally ridiculous.  It's about control meeting chaos, about certainty rubbing against improvisation.  It's about what happens when two people see the world in different ways and refuse to look away.

The humor comes from their friction.  From the moral lectures delivered at the worst possible moments.  From situations that escalate because someone refuses to admit they care.  There's tenderness, too, often where neither character expects it.

I didn’t want to write an assassin who is secretly soft in obvious ways, or a thief who is punished for being clever and alive.  I wanted them sharp-edged.  Competent and frustrating.  They should be capable of change, but only when it costs them something.

In short, I wanted them to misbehave.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing glimpses of this story here in the form of short scenes, moments of collision, pieces that reveal who these two are when no one else is watching.  Think of them as lantern-lit snapshots rather than a straight path forward.

I feel like they see me and go "Nah, we're good."  Should I be insulted?

For now, here’s a first taste.

Killian’s gaze drifted around the study, lingering on the candles that were slumped over in their holders, their wax crawling down polished surfaces like surrender.

Opening his arms he gestured vaguely.  “This is the problem.  The candles.  There’s too many and no restraint.”  Killian’s eyes flicked to the baby.  “You’ll want to have that little one raised somewhere with better taste.”

Killian stopped mid-thought and blinked.  His brow furrowed, his mouth tightening as if he’d opened the wrong mental drawer.  He tapped his finger against his temple once.  Twice.  “We’ve gotten off track.”

Lord Whitcombe nodded so hard his wig shifted.

Killian absentmindedly paced a step, then sapped his fingers.  “Ah!  Yes, that’s it!”

Lord Whitcombe’s breath hitched.

“I was supposed to kill you,” Killian said, using a tone that one uses to mention a missed appointment.  “There was a reason, now what was it?  Bribery, extortion…naming a racehorse after your mother without asking her permission.  It lost badly.”  He paused, thinking, then shrugged.  “Your mother was very upset.  She even underlined things.  I never get underlines!”

“My—?”  Lord Whitcombe croaked.

“She hired me.  Said you lost your moral spine and your sense of proportion.”  His gaze slid back to the globe in the corner.  He sighed.  “At the time I thought she meant politics.”

A beat passed. Then another.

Killian’s eyes returned to Lord Whitcombe and then to the baby, happily chewing on its own fist.

If you enjoyed this glimpse, there’s more to come. The rules are sharp. The thief is sharper. And neither of them is prepared for what happens next.