A to Z Challenge: D is for Darkness
The A to Z challenge is a challenge in which bloggers post every day during the entire month, and each day has a post starting with a different letter of the alphabet. The first day, the post features “A”, the second day “B”, and so on. It’s much better explained on the Blogging from A to Z website, so I’ll just refer you there.
Today I’m writing about “D”, and the “D” stands for “Darkness”. I like writing about darkness, and I’m not just talking about monsters, vampires or witches, or creatures of the dark. I like writing about the darkness in humans. About the darkness living inside all of us.
The protagonist for The Soul Thief, Riley, struggles with the job she has to do as an angel of death at first, because she thinks it might be evil. She’s a good person and always wants to help others, yet she too has a dark side. When someone threatens her friends and family, she’s willing to do anything it takes to stop this from happening. Even if it means hurting the person out to get her.
In Fractured, I play with the darkness theme a lot. A girl gets tormented by a spirit in a mirror, and the book explores some dark themes, making the reader question who is good and who is bad. Ultimately, I hope what readers gain from the book is that good and bad are relative, and grey are the true shades of this world. The topic becomes even more clear in Reflected, the sequel to this book, where the roles get reversed and the questions plays even more: is evil truly evil? Can a person be “just” evil, or is everyone a mix of both?
In my horror shorts, the topic of humanity and the evil of humanity gets mentioned a lot, too. I like writing about protagonists who struggle with being good, or who have bad tendencies. I’m working on a short this week that involves a serial killer with remorse – not for all his victims, mind you, just one, and the killer wonders why that is. I like exploring these themes, because I don’t believe darkness is as simple as that. I think people are always a mix of good and bad, no matter how evil one might think they are.