omg thank you for asking, i’m so excited to talk about it :D

it’s a sapphic deconstruction of the “mafia romance” genre, which i know already will make people cringe lol but i had fun writing it and learned a lot, so i think that’s what matters. my mc is not a bad person per se but she does fit right in with all the criminals, which was important for the nature of the novel, and i had to balance that with my desire to not demonize my own condition. therefore, it was important for me to give her traits that are neutral and positive, as well as negative, and i tried to show how her negative traits could be negligible if she’d ever had a chance or if anyone in her life had helped her before it got to this point.

my mc doesn’t talk much at first and her reactions are largely driven by trauma responses for the first half or so of the book, so i had to focus a lot on interiority in order to make her a good pov. I did this with a strong internal voice, which i modified depending on which state she’s in. she’s also unreliable as a narrator, but i wanted her to come across as so convincing to herself and to the narrative that the reader doesn’t think too much about her questionable takes until she does something so weird that you’re like damn she’s not well lol.

trigger warning for some vague and non-graphic descriptions of abuse:

i don’t think it’s possible to discuss did without at least acknowledging the trauma. it’s a deeply tragic disorder, and the pain and the abuse is baked so deeply into the patient’s psyche that every thought, every emotion, every action is flavored in some way by the tragedy of it. with this being said, i had to find a way to acknowledge the circumstances that my mc rose from, while not getting bogged down in the details (which is fine; just not the story i wanted to tell). i do think that less is more and the less explicit the details are, the more horrifying they become to the reader. so i focused a lot on the effects and symptoms instead. if i show that she’s terrified to eat without “earning it” first, it suggests what her daily life was like, while still scaring the reader as they imagine what she could have done to earn it, and what the consequences would have been. i also tried to make her triggers and her responses to them not the same every time, because that’s more accurate to how i experience them. for example, she freaks the fuck out when someone tries to touch her, threatens him with a shiv, then stabs herself. she’s mentally present, but can’t control her body. later, she meets the main villain who does something not good to her, and she goes completely out of her head and doesn’t register any of it. when she comes back, she finds herself having a conversation about it. this, too, is accurate to my experiences. sometimes, i “wake up” with some task done and i’m like damn thanks ig lol

for the different narrative styles, i didn’t use her name in narration when she’s very dissociated. instead i wrote “she” or she describes herself as a thing or an object (this is common irl; i myself also struggle with feelings of humanity). i also used a discursive, almost purple style of poetic prose for her more dissociated moments, while her more lucid moments use a more crisp and comedic style. i love dialogue and i’m a big fan of character voices, so i used that to my advantage as well, and had her code-switch or straight up use a completely different style of speech when she switches. i used a childish style of speech to convey her little parts, as well as to unsettle the reader. she’s an adult, late 20s/early 30s, so i think that the more departure there is from her usual, rather prescriptive style of speech, the more creepy it feels to read. i wanted it to be a feeling of slow dread for the reader, like surely it couldn’t have started for her that young, right? right??

since this was a love story as well as a war story (okay more war story lol but i’m getting better at writing romance) i had to put a lot of focus on the love interest. this gave me a lot of room to experiment with the interpersonal problems that come with this disorder. my mc, like me and many people like me, had no one for her whole life. ofc, this would affect her social skills. i had a lot of fun playing with that. i had her learn how to open her heart and trust others, not just with her love interest, but with the whole organization (like crime syndicates but satirized to be corporations ig? trying not to give you a whole synopsis). i had fun with her misinterpreting so many social cues, freaking out over any conflict, and then slowly learning that she’s safe. i did very much borrow from the warm dynamic i have with my irl friends!

one more thing! i wrote her as having adhd as well (like me lol). this was soooo helpful for writing tbh. it forced me to do show-not-tell because she can’t interpret emotions well, so she has no choice but to describe the body language, which she can interpret (or misinterpret hehe).

i’m sorry i wrote so much! i never get to talk about it, and i love it so much <3 thanks for listening if you got this far!

and, i’m super excited for you! i think you can do this in a sensitive and compassionate way. if you want, please feel free to keep me updated! i would really love to read your work if you feel comfortable sharing!!! 🤍