Perfect is boring. I’m just gonna go ahead and put that on record.

I like wonky, slightly-too-crispy homemade cookies. I like jeans that are frayed at the hem and holey at the knee because I’ve actually worn them places. I like my running shoes once they’ve clocked a few miles and stopped looking pristine and pretty. Give me the thing that has lived. Give me the thing that got knocked around a little and kept going anyway.

That’s just kinda my vibe. For cookies, for jeans, and – especially – for story characters.

My Love Language is Chaotic Good Characters

I’m so not subtle about this. The characters I love to write most are usually somewhere in the Chaotic Good neighborhood – very big hearts, very questionable decision-making, very genuinely trying. My villains tend to cluster more in the Neutral Evil to Chaotic Evil quadrants (which is its own kind of fun). But what seriously gets me out of bed to write is the messy middle ground where good people do hard, complicated things and have to figure out who they are on the other side of them.

Like my sweet, Super Good Boi, Diesel Black. He came to me as Lawful Good, which is totally noble and all, but honestly? Lawful Good can be a little… rigid. His story arc required him to unlearn some of that shit – to loosen his grip on control and let some delicious chaos (read: Avery, his fated mate, who is an absolute chaos gremlin, and I mean that in the most affectionate possible sense) shake him loose from the version of himself that was safe but stunted. Teaching a Lawful Good character how to embrace mess is, to me, one of the most satisfying things a story can do. I love it when a character achieves growth that costs something.

That cost is what makes me really root for someone.

Why We Love Imperfect Characters

Here’s the thing about flawless heroes: there’s literally nowhere to go. They arrive perfect and leave perfect, and you feel nothing because there was nothing at stake, and that’s boring with a b-o-r-i-n-g.

Wounded characters have stakes. They have blind spots and old damage and walls they built for good reasons that now need to come tumbling down. When they stumble – and ohhhh yes, they will stumble, repeatedly, and usually in front of everyone – you wince, but you stick around. You stay with them because you can see what they’re trying to do, even when they’re doing it badly. Maybe especially then.

I think we’re drawn to imperfect characters for the same reason we lean toward a struggling friend. Not because we like watching people suffer – I mean, unless they deserve to – but because we recognize the effort. We, ourselves, are familiar with the getting-back-up part – it’s as universal a language to humans as love. There is radical, quiet joy to be found in watching someone shoulder their damage and choose to keep going anyway, and that recognition – the part where we think to ourselves, “I know what that costs” – is where real emotional connection happens.

The characters in the UNITY universe are all carrying something. Some of them know what it is. Some of them have absolutely no idea. Part of the fun is watching them figure it out, usually at the worst possible time, usually while something supernatural is trying to eat them.

On Protective Love (and What It’s Not)

When I write romance, I have very specific feelings about what protective love should look like. It is not, to be clear, the alpha-hole-who-decides-things-for-you variety. That trope exists, and I understand its appeal, but it is not what I’m here to write. Not gonna yuck your yum, it’s just not a service I offer.

What I’m interested in writing is the same as what I’m interested in experiencing in my own life – the person who has your back without taking the wheel. Who lets you stand on the ledge on your own two feet but stays close enough to catch you if you happen to fall. Who sees your agency as a feature, not a threat, and adjusts their protectiveness accordingly.

I want my heroines to save themselves. I want my heroes to recognize that they did it. The best form of protective love is a partnership between two people who are genuinely stronger together, not dependent in ways that diminish either of them. Getting that choreography right is one of the trickiest and most satisfying things I do as a writer. It requires knowing my characters deeply enough to understand not just what they’ll do, but why – and whether that “why” comes from love or fear or old wounds they’re still working through.

Spoiler: usually it’s a lil bit of all three.

Emotional Repair Takes Forever (And That’s the Point)

I love writing characters mid-repair. Not all healed up. Not totally broken down. My favorite spot to pick up their stories is the uncomfortable, unglamorous in-between where they’re functional but still flinching, making progress but sometimes (a lot of times) sliding backward, living their whole complicated life while also trying to deal with the thing(s) they’ve been avoiding since chapter one.

Because that’s what healing actually looks like. Healing isn’t a montage or a highlight reel – we’d all be doing great if that were the case, right? It takes place over the course of a million tiny steps – inconsistent and nonlinear. And it happens at the same time as everything else – jobs and pack drama and supernatural threats and someone new showing up who makes it impossible to keep those walls up.

Longing is the emotional engine I come back to most often and most naturally. I don’t always set out to write slow-burn, but even when the attraction is fiery and instant, my characters tend to take their sweet time figuring out what to do with it. That ache of wanting something you can’t quite let yourself reach for is just irresistible for me as a reader and a writer. I think we, as readers, feel longing in our bones – it’s one of those universal experiences that doesn’t require explanation because we’ve all been there. When a character finally stops longing and starts reaching, and then actually gets there – that’s the moment I’m building toward. The sun coming through clouds. The story earns its joy because we watched the characters work for it.

My Banter is Load-Bearing

If you’ve read anything I’ve written, you’ve noticed that I am constitutionally incapable of writing serious things without also writing funny things. This is not an accident.

My own lived experiences have taught me that humor can help you carry the weight the world throws your way. You can be falling apart and still make someone laugh, and somehow, in the making of that laugh, something gets lighter. “Laughter is the best medicine” is sooo greeting card cliché, but it’s also just… true. I’ve used humor as a coping mechanism, a deflection mechanism, a bonding mechanism, and occasionally a chaos mechanism, and so do my characters.

The banter in my books isn’t just there because I like writing witty exchanges (though I totally do, a lot). It’s doing structural work. A well-timed joke can lower defenses. Teasing someone who matters to you is a way of saying I see you without the vulnerability of saying it out loud. Playful antagonism between characters who are circling each other is one of the most efficient ways to show that they’re paying close attention – and attention is part of the journey toward caring.

When I get the banter between characters right, I can feel the way it lifts a story. I can sense that it’s doing what the serious scenes do, even if it’s kinda doing it sideways, and with different timing.

All of It Together

Here’s what I’m actually building, when I zoom out: stories about people who got hurt, have to carry some of that hurt, and then have the audacity to reach for something good anyway. People who protect fiercely without controlling. Who crack jokes when things are terrible because that’s how they stay in the fight. Who take forever to heal but do the hard work of healing anyway. All of that belongs to the same thread. The wounds inform the love; the love informs the humor; the humor holds the wounds at a distance long enough for the character to survive them, and so on. It all feeds itself. When it works, it’s because these characters feel like people I know, or people I’ve been, or people I wish I could call when things get hard. That’s the whole goal, every time. That’s what I’m chasing. That’s what brings me back to the page.

Come Meet the Pack

The Black Wolf Series lives in that space where the stakes are genuinely high, and the feelings are genuinely messy, and someone is definitely going to say something sarcastic about it.

If you love soft hearts and sharp teeth, wounded people trying their best, protective love that respects the people being loved, and enough banter to survive the apocalypse, you’re in the right place.

The first chapter of Black Wolf is free. Grab a snack, find a cozy spot, and come meet the pack. I hope they earn a place in your heart.

Download the free first chapter of Black Wolf