Stories that
seduce the mind.

Victorian England seduces me first through its beauty. I am a woman who loves fashion, so of course I imagine myself being dressed for a grand ball, adorned with jewels, and doted upon by a handsome Englishman—my own Mr. Darcy—inside a sprawling country estate. I imagine horseback rides through the English countryside, afternoon walks through immaculate gardens, Hyde Park, and the grandeur of London's West End.

My fascination extends far beyond the Victorian period. I have always loved English history, from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, and my favorite monarch, Elizabeth I. England seems to carry its history everywhere. Every estate, cathedral, garden, and London street feels layered with the lives of those who came before.

Yet the beauty is only the surface.

Beneath the clothing, estates, and indulgence existed a world structured by enormous inequalities. Men and women occupied profoundly different positions under law and custom. Property, inheritance, money, and authority remained overwhelmingly in male hands, while women were frequently treated as extensions of the men who controlled their households and futures. Marriage could resemble a business transaction more than a declaration of love.

That contradiction fascinates me: the picture of perfection on the outside while everything crumbles within.

Class divisions shape nearly every relationship in Meade Hall and throughout the Devious Demons saga, whose historical world occupies almost half of each book. Masters and servants may live beneath the same roof, know one another's secrets, and develop intimate emotional bonds, yet an enormous social distance remains between them. I explore that divide through George and Emma in the Devious Demons saga and, even more intimately, through George and Ben Higgins in Meade Hall.

The question beneath both relationships is deceptively simple: Can love exist, thrive, and move forward when two people do not possess equal power?

For Victorian families, inheritance could determine everything. Marriage, reputation, legitimacy, and the production of an heir were essential to preserving wealth and carrying the family name forward. Survival did not merely mean staying alive. It meant ensuring that the estate, bloodline, and social position endured—regardless of the personal cost.

In Meade Hall, desire and power pass through generations of Meade men, from Francis to Senior and eventually to George. The hands change, but the pattern remains: desire first, power second. Each man wants something—or someone—and the power attached to his position determines how he pursues it. Their desires transform their lives, sometimes beautifully and sometimes destructively.

George's relationship with Ben allows me to examine nearly every form of inequality at once. There is the difference in class between master and servant, the difference in age and experience, and, most significantly, the danger surrounding love between two men. George controls many aspects of Ben's life during their early years, yet George also becomes profoundly dependent upon him. He cannot imagine living without Ben.

Ben's position is equally complicated. When opportunities for freedom appear, he cannot simply walk away. Obligation, family, dependence, and love bind him to Meade Hall in ways that no unlocked door can immediately undo. As the novel unfolds, George and Ben eventually begin to create their own form of freedom—not freedom from one another, but freedom together.

That is why Meade Hall could never merely contain LGBTQ+ themes. George and Ben are the novel's DNA. Without them, there is no story. They are two souls connecting, and although the world sees two men divided by class, age, and social law, the emotional center of their story is love, happiness, and, most importantly for Ben, family.

Mary's story reveals a different form of confinement. Victorian women could be exchanged through marriage and dowries to preserve wealth, status, and lineage. Love and companionship were often secondary—if they were considered at all. Meade Hall does not soften the suffering women could endure inside those arrangements. Some of what happens is deeply unpleasant, but the outward image of the perfect wife, perfect marriage, and perfect household often concealed a private reality of isolation, fear, and powerlessness.

The historical Meade family became the foundation from which I built much of the Devious Demons saga. Their world existed first, and weaving them into the saga felt natural because the same emotional conflicts repeat across centuries. The clothing and laws may change, but questions of gender, class, ownership, ambition, and equality remain painfully recognizable. Even now, women continue to confront unequal pay, lost opportunities, and systems in which authority does not fall evenly.

At its core, I think of redemption as a kind of buying back—recovering or saving something that has been damaged, surrendered, or taken away. It resembles the scales of justice moving endlessly back and forth, searching for balance without ever settling perfectly upon the fulcrum.

Perhaps redemption is not the moment when those scales finally become still.

Perhaps it begins when we recognize what power has taken—and decide what must be returned.