Sick Heart is just a love story about two people who each control only one thing in their lives.
Speech.
And they don’t need to learn to fight. They’ve been fighting for so long, it’s now second nature.
Anya was already a warrior. She was just different kind of warrior.
And Cort’s heart wasn’t really sick, he just turned it off to survive.
This is the point, I think.
Because people often say I write dark books. But you know what? That’s not really accurate. I mean, some of them are definitely dark. But I don’t actually write books about dark things or people.
I write books about survivors of dark circumstances.
Every single dark book I’ve ever written was about survivors.
I first started writing books about the global dark underworld in 2013. Tragic started out about an abused girl running away. Manic was a little glimpse into her ordeal. And Panic was her coming to terms with the fact that she willingly took part in something very dark and disturbing. And back in 2013 I was hesitant to put in the stuff about human trafficking.
Not because it was dark and disturbing.
I didn’t want to put it in there because I didn’t think people would believe it.
Because I didn’t believe it. I really didn’t think this shit was happening.
Modern-day slavery? A global network of slave traders? WTAF are you talking about?
This was my worldview at the time. So I was pretty uncomfortable putting human trafficking into that series.
But in it went. And… well. The story kept going. And since the human trafficking was already in there, I kinda had to see it through.
I would just like to stop here and say I’m a little bit into the conspiracy stuff. BUT – and this is a HUGE BUT – my interest was always just about aliens.
lol
Like, for real, that’s as far as it went for me. I am so in to Ancient Aliens—because I’m actually a science nerd and I want explanations for all the weird shit on this planet we can’t explain. I am simply a seeker of truth. Most of you already know this about me. And a lot of you have probably read my Junco Sci-Fi series. So that was the totality of my interest in conspiracy theories. All that other shit about Kennedy, and 911, and what have you – that shit could all go fuck itself.
I just didn’t care.
But now I was stuck in this new world of human trafficking and there was no way to back out, so I just went with it. I made up child assassins and a global shadow government called the Company. And listen, of course I knew that there was a conspiracy theory already floating around out there about the global shadow government, right? It’s called the New World Order and I didn’t invent it. I just didn’t believe in it.
But that’s why it’s called fiction, so whatever.
I kept going.
And it was fun. Good god, who doesn’t love James Fenici? Right? I loved writing the Company books. Little Sasha Cherlin. Harper and Nick Tate. A little sprinkle of my man, Ford.
Those were some good times.
But then… then I wrote a book called Meet Me in the Dark and that’s where shit got a little too real for me. Because even though it’s really hard to find evidence for all these wacky conspiracy theories, there is some hard, damning evidence of a little US government program called MK-Ultra.
They fucked with people’s heads.
This was a real thing.
And when I discovered that, I didn’t even know what to do with that information. I just finished the book and did my best to forget about it.
But it was there. I’ve written this sentence in books at least three times – Once you know things, you can’t un-know them.
So once I knew that this mind-fuck shit was real, well… my imagination took off and I’ve been running with it ever since.
And that’s all fine. There is a market out there for romantic conspiracy stories. Obviously. I’ve done pretty well with these books.
But the reason I bring this up is to highlight my journey of acceptance. Right?
In the Rook & Ronin series I came to terms with the fact that human trafficking exists.
In Meet Me in the Dark I accepted that mind-control programs—whether effective or not—were something the US government was in to.
I didn’t really believe there was a Company out there, but I was exploring what it might feel like to be caught up in it using fiction.
And in order to keep writing about these characters and this world, I had to keep going. I had to dig a little deeper each time I started a new spin off.
The Misters was about the corrupt media.
The Dirty Ones was about the corrupt elite.
Three, Two, One was about a sex cult.
In To Her was about underground crime syndicates.
Bossy Brothers was about information warfare.
Bully King and Ruling Class were about secret rituals.
Creeping Beautiful is about living on the ‘inside’.
And when it finally came time to write Sick Heart I remember sitting down and asking myself… OK. Where can these assholes hide where no one can see what they’re up to? Because if I’m gonna write a story about an underground MMA fighting ring where every fight is a death match, not even these smug, uber-elite assholes can do this in the open.
And by this time (summer 2020) we’re neck-deep in our very own “dystopian future” filled with corporate data-mining, and facial recognition cameras on every corner in big cities, and social media trying to control the world via access to information.
So where can ‘they’ hide where I haven’t (fictionally) found them yet?
And the answer, of course, is the ocean.
I have set books on many a private island. That’s no longer even interesting, I’ve done it so much. And the idea that the
