Loving my own ‘Pantry’

Ever open your fridge and 'yuck' all the options? Decide the clothing you recently purchased must have been chosen by some other personality you didn't know you had? Wish for someone else's hair, waistline or car? All very, extremely and universally human. 

There's that same restless dissatisfaction when it comes to our creative lives. We peek into someone else's creative pantry and covet their ingredients while overlooking the feast we could prepare with our own. 

I struggled with this in the beginning—deeply intimidated because what I saw on the pages I wrote didn't sound like my favorite fiction writers, let alone the sci-fi authors I devour by the shelf-full. My friends were genuinely puzzled when I announced I was writing books, immediately assuming I'd be crafting science fiction. Their confusion was understandable—after all, my bookshelves overflow with Neal Stephenson (everything he's written), Liu Cixin's "Three-Body Problem," the entire "Expanse" series. I've spent countless hours lost in these worlds, marveling at the authors' abilities to create believable futures. Reading them is like going out to an exotic restaurant instead of cooking at home. 

"But you love sci-fi," they said when I explained I was writing domestic psychological thrillers. 

The disconnect wasn't logical to them. But my life experience draws me toward stories of human vulnerability, survival, and transformation. With friends and family who've experienced domestic violence, and my own history creating music that explored healthier relationships (my second album "Nouveau Torch" featured songs with lyrics like "I won't live in stormy weather"), my creative orbit is around human resilience in the face of danger. 

Reading and writing tap into different parts of our brain. As a reader, I'm drawn to worlds unlike my own—to escape, to learn, to marvel. I can tolerate tension and anxiety when it happens in a setting so different from real life that I get enough emotional distance to enjoy it. But as a writer, I'm compelled to explore what I care about most deeply: human motivation, fear, courage, and transformation. I don't think I know enough about science for my brain to do all that around science. 

Sigh… 

Just as no two cooks have identical ingredients, there's something deeply alchemical about where our stories come from. "The Vanishing Series" concept arose when me, myself and I were under threat. (Yeah, one day I will tell that story, but not right now.) The hard parts of my life—especially those—as daughter, sister, mother, wife, girlfriend and friend, along with the jobs and psychological work I've done, were alchemical processes: the transmutation of DNA, life, love and learning into a mind from which emerges a story that will be uniquely told. 

Stephenson writes novels that reflect his intellectual breadth. Liu Cixin infuses his stories with technical precision. Le Guin revolutionized science fiction by bringing depth and feminist perspectives to a genre that rarely offered them. Each of these writers wields an authentic creative voice because it emerges from their authentically unique, alchemically forged brain. 

For me, that means writing with strong psychological elements, drawing on decades of studying how people think, what motivates them, and what they fear. When I stopped comparing my writing to anyone else's and embraced my own voice, everything changed. I got more specific in the details; the characters became more memorable, the tension genuinely unsettling rather than manufactured. "Everything earned" is my mantra—the emotional dynamics must be rooted in how human beings really act and react. 

Perhaps the truest kind of maturity is trusting the alchemy of becoming—discovering what we already are and allowing that authenticity to blossom. Since the book cannot be what the author is not, my continued growth as a human being means my life, and the books I write, can be more authentic too. 

When we stop wishing for someone else's ingredients, we discover our own kitchen is already full of flavor. 

Yum!