The meaning behind the books

*Trigger warning: mentions of abuse*

Hey friends! Al here, dishing out some fun little factoids about the person behind the mask. In my last post, I mentioned the fact that I was raised in a *very* conservative christian household. As you may have surmised, perhaps from your own experiences, that fucking sucked. Excuse me while I don’t mince words about my background.

I won’t deny I have recognized that moments of this upbringing were pivotal to becoming the cryptid I am today. You learn a lot about the human experience from shit like this. Most importantly: you (should) learn how not to treat other people because of how bad it felt happening to you. I know not everyone takes that message away from childhood trauma, but that is the one I try to keep close to my heart.

A big feature of my upbringing was sexual repression and vilifying sexual acts. I was told by multiple people in my family that my worth was partially determined by my chastity and that if I did the deed, it would show in the way I walked and presented myself. I was told that any form of sex outside of vaginal was evil (yes that includes oral), I was told that no one would want to marry me if I slept with them before marriage (in the eternal words of my grandmother: why buy the cow when you can get the milk free?), and lastly, I was told that birth control and condoms often failed, and that abstinence until marriage was the only real ‘safe sex’.

For most of my life, I have had major sexual hangups. I still do, in fact. All of this fed into my low self esteem, lack of bodily autonomy, and moderate tokophobia (fear of pregnancy). I don’t see the latter changing any time soon and I’m honestly fine with the last one at this point in my life. This brings me to the reason for the post: writing about sex and relationships has helped me.

In The Devil Went Down on Georgia, you find an awkward, 19 year old person who is wide-eyed and naive about the world, flung into a fantasy situation with a handsome horned gentleman. You’ll notice my MC’s usually sport a naivety about relationships because this is a point of view I know all too well. I understand the discomfort some people feel about a 19 year old girl paired with an ancient monster, but it’s not fetishizing the age gap. These were fantasies I HAD at 19 years old. Part of it is paying homage to that young person who wanted to be whisked away by some horned, winged fellow. Part of it was making casual sex not-so-taboo in my mind. All of it was for me in some way. Yes, I wanted to write a book people would enjoy, but I also needed the words I wrote.

For Blood and Key Lime Pie, I talked a little bit about it in my afterword, but I’ll expand upon that here. Part of it was being a late bloomer sexually. Elise is 25 and still hasn’t experienced intimacy because she’s partially convinced that her books are just as good as the real thing. Then, Klyde shows up and proves her wrong. It’s not a 1:1 experience from my own life, but most of her revelations are my own. The smallness I mentioned comes from a core trauma of mine where I watched as my mom was abused by her boyfriend, and all the experiences that made me not want to take up space built upon that. I cannot begin to tell you how powerless I’ve felt in pivotal moments of my life, and as a way to reclaim some power, I work out/strength train.

The underlying theme for the next book on the roster is learning that you can’t, and shouldn’t, carry the world on your shoulders. There is a time when you as an individual have to try and put your needs in front of the needs of other people, even if they don’t agree with your priorities. This is a lesson I’m still learning. There is value in selflessness, and there is also destruction. How much is too much? When the world asks you to sacrifice the one thing that has brought you joy, will you do it? Part of my inspiration came from reading The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin. It is an excellent short story that really brings ‘the needs of the many vs the needs of the few’ into question. A utopia built upon the suffering of one child. I’ve actually considered naming something Omelas in the book just as a fun reference, but I also don’t want to overstep.

Writing, and on the broader scale, art, is so powerful. It DOES have the power to heal those wounds; to let them scab over and scar. You just have to be prepared for the stinging of the balm as it works its magic. For anyone with similar experiences, you are not alone, and it gets better if you are willing to work on it and take control of your life. There are moments where you feel like you’re back at square one and that nothing has changed, but all you need to do is look back over your shoulder and see how far you’ve come.