Dark Places, Real People: Why I Write Gritty Fiction
Why The Alpha Flame refuses to look away from the hardest truths.
Dark Places, Real People: Why I Write Gritty Fiction
I’ve been asked more than once why I chose to write The Alpha Flame the way I did. Why make it so dark? Why not spare the reader from the worst of it? Why not soften the blow?
The short answer is: because I respect my readers too much to lie to them. The long answer is more complicated. I write gritty fiction because life is gritty. Because people suffer, and they survive, and that survival is rarely clean or easy. If I’d polished the edges off Maggie and Beth’s story, I wouldn’t be telling the truth. I’d be offering comfort where there shouldn’t be any.
I know that makes the book hard to read at times. It was hard to write. But to do less would have felt dishonest, to me, and to the people whose stories inspired it.
The Responsibility of Telling the Truth
I didn’t write The Alpha Flame to be gratuitous. I wrote it to be honest. To show the violence that hides in plain sight. The damage people carry even when they look fine. The choices no one should have to make, but some people do.
Gritty fiction isn’t about wallowing in ugliness. It’s about acknowledging it so you can see what survival really looks like. So you can witness the fight, the fear, the hurt, and the stubborn hope that refuses to die, even when everything else does.
That’s why I write it the way I do. Because there’s a kind of respect in not looking away. Because real people go through dark places. And because they deserve to have their stories told truthfully.