Behind the Shadows: My Journey Writing Claimed By Night
By day, I am a teacher, spending my hours guiding students through the complexities of literature and the power of language. But when the sun sets, my true work begins.
Writing Claimed By Night, the first installment of The Night Chronicles, was an exploration into desolation, ancestral secrets, and the fragile, haunting feeling that something is watching from just out of sight. It began with a simple, terrifying premise: a mother vanishing without a trace, leaving behind an unnerving silence that lingers for years.
Finding the Silence
When I started writing Chapter 1, I wanted to capture that precise moment when the ordinary becomes extraordinary—and chilling. For my protagonist, Liz Mitchell, the horror wasn't found in a sudden explosion, but in the unnerving vacancy of her own home at age twelve.
I focused on sensory details to ground the reader in her experience:
- The unnerving spotlessness of a kitchen that should have been noisy with weekend breakfast preparations.
- The "hollow, vacant" quality of the silence.
- The sight of her mother’s keys and purse left behind, signaling that something was fundamentally wrong.
This silence became the bedrock of the entire series. It wasn't just a plot point; it was an ache that followed Liz for seven years, transforming her perspective on her ordinary life and the father she loved, Jack Mitchell.
The Encroaching Mystery
Writing Claimed By Night required balancing the mundane world of "My Bar," the establishment where Liz works, with the encroachment of a dark, supernatural reality.
As an author, my goal was to explore the shadows that exist just beyond the veil of our ordinary reality. When I created the antagonist, Daemon—the terrifying, absolute power who orchestrates Liz’s abduction to collect an ancient debt—I wanted him to embody a predatory awareness, an unnerving focus that turns the comfortable, familiar setting of a neighborhood bar into a place of entrapment.
The Writing Process as Exploration
Writing is my way of exploring the struggle for agency against destiny. In Claimed By Night, Liz moves from a passive victim of an inexplicable past to someone forced to confront the chilling truth about her lineage, her mother’s secret pacts, and the hidden, dangerous forces that have been tracking her since childhood.
For me, the process is a descent into the dark. I am constantly asking: What if your ordinary life was built on a lie?
I am so grateful to have you walking these paths with me as The Night Chronicles continue. Thank you for reading.
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