WHERE THE DARKNESS COMES FROM

The real places that shaped my brand of Southern noir

The darkness didn’t come from books. It came from the land.

I grew up in places where daylight was honest, but the nights had teeth.

Hollows — hollers, if you grew up right — that echoed long after you walked out of them. Neighbors who carried g

rudges longer than they carried mortgages. A whole world where folks didn’t wait around for the law when someone crossed a line too far.

It wasn’t scary.It was just normal.

People talk about “Southern charm” like it’s a monologue from a tourist brochure.

But where I’m from?

Charm and danger sit across the dinner table every Sunday.

Let me show you a little of the ground that shaped me.

The Road That Never Forgot Anything

There was a stretch of tar-and-gravel near where I grew up — the kind the county repaved when it felt like it, not when we needed it. A dead-end road that gave up at the edge of the mountain.

Fog clung to that asphalt like it had secrets to protect.

People slowed down there, not because of the curve, but because we all knew exactly who’d lost control on that bend twenty years back.

In my world, the land remembers everything. And it never forgets what you owe it.

The Mountain That Taught Me Quiet Isn’t Peace

Some nights, the woods went silent in a way that meant something was out there — watching, listening, deciding.

Animals know. Kids know. Women sure as hell know.

That hush taught me more about tension, danger, and instinct than any craft book could.

That’s the sound I write into my stories — the pause before a choice that can’t be undone.

The Small Town Where Everyone Knew the Truth (and Pretended Not To)

Every town has its public lies — the polite ones we tell outsiders.

Then there are the private truths:

• who drinks too much

• who hits their wife

• who’s cheating (and with who)

• who stole what

• who damn well deserved the punch they got behind the Pizza Hut

None of that made the police blotter.

It lived in the space between neighbors — a quiet ledger of sin, secrets, mercy, and survival.

That ledger shaped the morality in my books:not clean, not neat, not polite —but true.

Why I Write the Dark

People sometimes ask why I don’t write lighter stories.

The real question is: How could I, when the land I come from refuses to lie about what people are capable of?

I grew up seeing how justice really works when nobody’s wearing a robe. I grew up seeing how fast loyalty can turn into violence —and how love can twist into something dangerous enough to kill for.

I learned early that darkness isn’t an aesthetic. It’s a place.

A place that builds you from the bones out, then breaks you, scars you, and follows you even when you think you outran it.

That’s where my stories come from.

The land. The people. The silence. The truth no one wanted to say out loud.

And if you’ve read my books, you’ve already walked that road with me.

If you’re here for grit, shadow, and Southern truth that doesn’t blink —stick around. The dark’s just heating up.