There is a certain kind of story people would rather not hear. Not because it isn’t true — but because it is true, and true in a way that implicates the rooms we live in, the people we trust, the version of love we were sold. I write those stories anyway.
I’m not interested in shock. Shock is cheap, and it wears off. What holds my attention is the quieter machinery underneath — how harm is rarely loud at first, how it hides inside affection, how the people caught in it keep explaining it away. My characters are not case studies. They are people you would recognize, right up until the moment you’d rather not.
I don’t spell everything out. I’ve never believed a writer has to. What matters is that the reader feels the weight of it and is trusted to carry that weight without being told exactly where to set it down. That trust is the whole point. The stories we look away from are usually the ones we most need to have told — not to wallow in them, but to stop pretending they only happen to other people.
So no, I won’t soften a story to make it easier to sell. But I won’t hand you the worst of it for sport, either. I’ll do the harder thing: make you care, and then make you look.