The Beginning

It took months to decide on which project to polish, weeks to finally commit to a single manuscript, and days to figure out that I wanted to self-publish on Halloween.

I'm generally an impulsive person.

Broadly speaking, this is probably as smooth as the process could've gone, given my penchant for over-researching. I tend to agonize over every detail, only to eventually fly by the seat of my pants as I get sucked into the process. This isn't just true for publishing—it's true for every 3am hair dye job, every foray into a weird new hobby, and every piece of writing I've ever done for myself.

I tend to get stuck on the startup process. Maybe it was years of the word preparation being drilled into my head; maybe it's that exhausting format for writing essays that we're taught since middle school. Since elementary, even. (Not that I would know; I was homeschooled so much of my life.) Whatever the reason, I usually spend too much time drafting. I'm always paranoid it's never enough. I outline and reoutline, and sometimes things get so convoluted they look nothing like what I initially thought of. I get frustrated because it's just not the same. I do the same when I draw—I sketch something , then try and render it only to realize that the sketch looked better and why can't I figure out how to properly blend shadows on skin?

Pretty Little Revenge was a collection that initially contained only the first section of the currently published version—eleven poems, all fueled by my love of dramatic monologue as well as countless hours of Mindhunters and NBC's Hannibal. It was the beginning of the pandemic, and living in Los Angeles coupled with my intense health-scare adjacent phobias meant that I spiraled into a very dark corner of my mind that I'd desperately tried very hard not to peer into. Living with a single roommate and dealing with the directionless feelings that came with what I can only define as 'survival brain' meant that things got out of hand very quickly. But my fascination with the bloody and dramatic allowed a safe expression of the violence that was all too real at the time—the protests in the city I lived in, the shootings, the murmurings of serial killers that have since been identified and caught.

Watching Hannibal was fun because Doctor Lecter didn't exist. He was a glorious monster that was made up of equal parts style and serial murder, and the show was pure eye candy to me. I always called the shots of blood arcing through the air tasty without fully realizing the irony, until I introduced my roommate to the show during the first few months of quarantine. These unreal serial killers and crime stories I loved so much let me process horror without the accompanying despair that comes with real-life victims and the failings of the modern justice system. In Hannibal, the rude get eaten. Each central character is morally questionable. There is no focus on the judicial trial that comes when Will is blamed for the killings—it's instead about the lengths Hannibal will go to protect Will, to thumb his nose at the judge before neatly suspending them in the courtroom in an intensely dramatic display that is nearly laughable if it wasn't so horrific.

Fake serial killers are all about the story, the madness, the visual and visceral effect they have on the people consuming their stories the way the killer consumes their victims. I had plenty of good dinners on the couch in front of the television while I watched Hannibal slit a throat as my roommate said no in a tone of utter shock and awe. It felt like I was raising a glass to a fake killer whose victims typically included people who were just rude, and I could vibe with that. It's the petty little voice in your head that gets irritated when someone sneezes in public and doesn't cover their mouth. The despair of watching the world fall apart was tempered by an evolving homicidal impulse that was more exhaustion than anything else. After all, when you're locked away from humanity for over a year, you realize that maybe people are harder to deal with than you remember.

I dipped my toe into true crime once. While I can say that there are some cases I find interesting simply from the perspective of the stories they tell, I can also say that I find it very difficult to wax poetic about those stories when someone very real lost their life or was irrevocably changed in a fundamental way. By no means is this a blanket statement; after all, some survivors of serial killers or attempted murder go on to advocate for things like awareness of spousal abuse or self-defense strategies. But those are case-by-case, and I'm already tired at the end of the day, so I find it safer to rest my head on worn copies of books about fake killers, fake detectives, and the very real horror that is often intertwined with being part of the most marginalized groups in our society.

All of this rambling is to say that Pretty Little Revenge evolved from a series of monologues to a collection of wicked words revolving around the concept of violence, beauty, and a kind of abhorrent love. It emerged from a very real internal conversation about the way I exist within several spheres of potential victimhood, and how I still manage to fall short of the most vulnerable members of society. Every poem was a way to both distract and confront the horror, because as with many things, I recede during times of fear to what's comfortable to me: the complexity of the queer experience, and its historical existence in the context of horror media.

I could probably write essays about why I say I find serial killers fascinating, but then have to add the caveat that I would never wear their faces on a t-shirt. (Apparently that's a thing; it made me consider self-quarantine all over again just to get away from people.) 

But I don't really feel like it right now, so instead, I'll say this: I can't believe I finally self-published. But I'm so excited to see where this thing goes, and I hope you join me for the ride.