Inside the Mind of a Dark Fantasy Author

Why My Books Feel Different—and Why I Can’t Find Others Like Them

CORRIDOR OF CRUELTY | THE TWISTED ROOT
Here madness dwells.

This one’s gonna hit differently and from multiple angles. For this mission, we’re running silent, and running deep. The brimstones are calling for no mercy, just blood. And I’m going to give it to you.

We’re going to make a change this time around. Normally, these posts are for Ko-dons only, but this time, I’m making a change. Just once, I’m pulling back the curtain and allowing others into this world. This one’s available to all readers, subscribers, and surfers alike. I hope this post finds them, and for my subscribers, I’m showing you the depth of the Ko-don posts. It’s far more than what you read before the paywall.

That said, I will reserve some just for the Ko-don crowd. They pay, after all, but a good 75% of this will be for public viewing. With the preamble done, let’s get to it.

Normally, these posts are all about lore, worldbuilding, characters, and the like. This time, we’re turning inward, both you and I, and we’re finding out why you enjoy reading my worlds, and why I enjoy writing what I do. Why does the sex sizzle? Why do the choices hit us hard? And why do character deaths destroy us? Let’s find out!

If you’re expecting a quick read, this isn’t it. This will be long and in-depth, and by the time you read it, I’ve probably been working on it for over a month. It was a deep dive for me, so you get it, too. For context, this will probably be as long as a normal chapter in my fantasy books, around 6K words.

Who usually gravitates towards my books:
Right out of the gate, I can definitely say—per the Myers-Briggs—if you’ve got an N or a J in your four-letter personality type, you gravitate the strongest. What draws them? Let’s find out.

Foremost, I’m an INTJ writer. With my personality making up roughly 2–3% of the world, I feel quite unique, so my perspective is going to hit different from the jump.

But with N-types, you’re reading for meaning, not necessarily escapism. My writing rewards you with inference, metaphor, and subtext. To be fair to the S-types, they often either miss this or think it’s too heavy-handed. More about them later.

For Ns, you’re drawn to the symbolic layering: the mythic + psychological architecture, philosophical dialogue + existential subtext, and patterns across my works. We’ll dive deeper later. Bottom line: it resonates because Ns don’t want to see the world; you want to interpret it. I never spoon-feed it to you.

And this is normally where you hit the paywall, the tip of the iceberg. So, let’s dive below and see how deep it goes.

For the J-types, you crave structure, coherence, and consequence, and I give it to you in spades! My worlds operate on morality and metaphysical laws. Everything has a cause and effect. There’s a cost to it, and the fallout is often brutal and total.

You’re drawn to systems that make emotional and ethical sense, structure that punishes laziness and rewards discipline, and sound logic inside the chaos, even if tragic. Where P-types (Perceivers) like open endings with a moral fog obscuring the scaffolding, you like opacity with rules, like ambiguity inside law rather than randomness.

For the cross-section of the NJ-core, you guys get the sweet spot. You see the pattern, and you get the structure.

The readers who resonate the most are:
INTJ/INFJ: Philosophical strategists drawn to moral architecture and psychological realism.
ENTJ/ENFJ: Commanding personalities intrigued by power, consequence, and control.
INTP/INFP: A secondary group that loves meaning, but they tire out from density if there’s little to no emotional pay-off.

These personality types are more likely to read my work, scanning for recurring motifs, inversions, and thematic symmetry.

The shape of the reader:
You guys can’t get enough of the moral calculus, wondering if choices were justified. You don’t flinch from emotional exposure because it teaches you pattern recognition. Further, the details within, the little things that most casual readers miss, you pick up on, and you get a small smile of pride knowing you caught it. Lastly, blending structure and vulnerability mirrors internal tension, and possibly within you.

Let’s take a gander at the psychological map of all the readers who might be drawn in, what their core drive is, and why they stick around. Please note that I realize this is a sweeping generalization, and it won’t account for everyone.

INTJ/INFJ/ENFJ/ENTJ/INTP/ISFP/ISTP/ESTP—these are the personalities that most often resonate with my worlds.
The Analysts (INTJ, INFJ, INTP, ENTP) seek a meaning that survives through darkness—ideas with blood on them. They want philosophy under fire, stories tested by consequence and heat, and to see if they fracture. I don’t sell you hope; characters have to earn it, and these readers respect the cost.
The Commanders (ENTJ, ESTP, ISTJ) crave order and consequence. Power, shame, control—these are their dialects, especially how they transact with one another. They want a structure that punishes weakness and rewards will. Sex and violence are languages they understand. It’s not shock value; it’s stakes that govern the acts.
The Empaths (ISFP, ENFJ, INFJ) stay for psychological realism without euphemism. They read for dignity under pressure, for the truth that even monsters ache, and that intimacy reveals more than it hides. Choices brand people, and the consequences don’t get erased by a magic wand. You want characters that feel true, even if they turn out to be monsters.

What all these readers are not looking for:
None of the above is looking for sanitized intimacy, a fade-to-black where there’s still truth to be discovered. You’re not searching for optimism without receipts, because hope is earned but only through cost. You couldn’t care less about incoherent magic or ethics; you want something with meaning. Shock for the sake of shock isn’t on your checklist, but you enjoy a damn good shock when it makes psychological sense, even if you missed the signs. Often, they’re there, even if we didn’t catch it the first time.

Adjacent Fandoms & Tastes:
So, who else might like to read my work? Well, let’s go down a list, and if anyone you know likes the following, then they’ll probably like the Dark Legacy Series (DLS).

Books: McCarthy, Bakker, Lawrence, Abercrombie, Morgan, Sapkowski, Muir, VanderMeer, and Martin.
Games/Film: KOTOR II, The Last of Us, Blade Runner 2049, Villeneuve’s Dune, The Northman.
Music vibes: Dark ambient, post-metal, neo-classical (searching for mood first, and lyrics second).

How can you recruit these wayward followers? Simple, by talking to them in angles that’ll convert them by flipping the things they love and tying it into the series. The people who watch these shows, read these books, or play these games, like:

Consequence-forward—every choice leaves a scar; we keep the scar.
Intimacy with grammar—sex and power obey rules; violation has a syntax.
Myth, not nihilism—the world is cruel, but ordered; gods are bound by the same law as you.
Precision over spectacle—no sprawl. Blade and whisper prose.

My works:
Now, let’s switch tracks from the audience to my writing. I always have a very hard time finding books I like, that are like the things I write, and I’ve concluded that there are no books out there like mine. Yes, they have elements, no denying that, and no, I’m not 100% original, but they don’t hit all the pillars. Some have come quite close, but they always fumble the ball at the crucial moment.

Most writers chase categories, general audience appeal, or specific genres with structured guardrails. I burn it all to the ground. I don’t chase, write for the masses, or request rules. All of that is chains, and I break them.

I write where four disciplines intersect: psychological realism, moral ambiguity, erotic candor, and mythic architecture—all driven by existential defiance. Most books trade one or two of those away. I don’t. That’s why my work is too raw for standard epic fantasy, too philosophical for erotica, too bloody for polite literary fiction, but exactly right for readers who want the overlap.

Plus, I actually have a plot, so it’s too in-depth for smut.

Psychological Realism:
My fiction bleeds psychology. Characters aren’t pawns in a plot; they’re haunted organisms reacting to consequence, trauma, instinct, and self-deception. I write emotion like anatomy—no gesture without motive, no desire without a wound. Every choice emerges from internal necessity, not authorial convenience. Consciousness is fractured, layered, dangerous terrain. That realism makes impossible things feel believable because the people feel true. That, more than anything, is my takeaway: Character over plot wins every time!

Moral Ambiguity:
There’s no virtue without cost, no sin without reason. I refuse moral shortcuts—every choice stains something, whether in blood, betrayal, or sacrifice. And yes, that includes self-sacrifice, as rare in my books as it is in the real world. My characters oscillate between damnation and duty; redemption is rarely clean. I don’t treat the scaffolding systems of faith, politics, and war as ideologies; I treat them as labyrinths because nothing is ever so clean-cut. The question isn’t “who’s good?” It’s “what did this choice cost, and who paid the ultimate price?” And sometimes, the answer might be someone who got suckered. Readers often leave asking whether survival itself might be the worst crime or eternal damnation, having to survive in the wake of what’s left.

Erotic Candor:
I once had a problem with writing sex, and that’s because I was afraid that my mom would pick up my book and have a heart attack. There was no swearing, no on-screen deaths, and I didn’t even hint at sex. But to be honest, it was holding me back, and eventually I learned the art of not giving a fuck. She’s an adult, the same as me, and just because I write something doesn’t mean I’m that person. If I write about a serial killer, that’s not me. If I write about a millionaire, clearly I’m not one. So, she’d just need to learn to separate the author from the art.
Back to sex …

In my worlds, sex is a truth serum, revealing the naked character beneath—choices, consequences, betrayal, and finding out something more than what we already knew. It’s not titillation, exposure for the sake of reading about a woman’s ass and a man’s baby arm, though I want it to sizzle. I care less about the measurements of Tits McGee; I want to know what it cost her, and if it destroyed her or strengthened her.

Desire reveals hierarchy, shame, control, need … these are the power dynamics that polite fiction buries or acts like it doesn’t exist. Intimacy in my books is both confession and confrontation: a mirror that shows characters what they are when masks slip or fail. I treat the erotic as another battlefield, waged over memory, dominance, identity, and maybe even morality. Precision and intensity isn’t pornography. Restraint makes it dangerous, and submission makes it potent.

I’m not one of those readers or writers who say, “Sex isn’t necessary on the page.” I say, put it in there. If we go that route, then nothing is “necessary.” I write about real-world shit that you and I have probably experienced, and if we haven’t, like fiends coming from the Underworld, well, that’s just the made-up part. Characters need to be real on all fronts; that’s the story I want. I don’t cheapen anything with innuendo or fading to black as he looks longingly at the pillow-top mattress. No, he’s gonna break that sucker in and you’re going to see what it means to him, before, during, and after.

I could say a lot more on the subject, but we’ll move on.

Mythic Architecture:
Under the grit and grief, there’s structure, a cosmology of discordant harmony. Harmony because it’s equally applied, but discordant because it’s not always pretty. Each saga belongs to a larger order: gods, systems, the gravity of destiny. I fuse the intimate and the epic so that a single human act can echo through a world. If you haven’t seen it yet, don’t worry; it’s coming. Or if you really want to go crazy, go back and read.

What separates my universe from most grimdark stories is that it’s not nihilistic. I don’t reject religion outright and think it’s meaningless. Religion, whether you’re a believer or not, is better for a society than a society without it. But my worlds are tragic, ordered, and self-aware—myth functioning as anatomy against the backdrop of religion—whichever one the characters follow. Or maybe they don’t follow one at all. It reads like history written long after the apocalypse, and that’s always been my goal, just relaying the chronicles that took place long ago. We’re glimpsing their lives, and they’ve lived, breathed, and died, leaving their mark on the world.

Theology:
I treat divinity not as comfort but as structure—the architecture of consequence that binds gods and mortals alike. Faith in Ermaeyth isn’t sentimental, and it’s not front and center like most theologies of our world. Those who believe, it’s their personal journey, and it underpins everything in existence. As in our world, belief varies by each individual soul, some corrupt and others are not. Explicit righteous isn’t a guarantee; piety isn’t a spectacle. So, every belief system is tested, corrupted, or reinterpreted until it either breaks or proves itself worthy.

The divine isn’t omnibenevolent—it’s bound by the same moral calculus as mortals. More over, divine law keeps the gods from overriding free will and mortal agency. Not everyone adheres to this doctrine, and it’s those you have to worry about—if you can figure out which gods are real. Ermaeyth theology isn’t about worship; it’s about structure, accountability, and scale. And when you’ve got a world teeming with tyrants, monsters, and magic reeking unholy ruin upon all, well … theology gives the world a touch of gravity, subtly reminding the reader and characters that sin, sacrifice, and grace aren’t metaphors. There’s more to the world than chaos and damnation.

Wrap-up:
To give this a nice bow and shorthand, let’s give these one-sentence summaries.

Psychological realism gives the how.
Moral ambiguity gives the why.
Erotic candor gives the truth.
Mythic architecture gives the arena.
Theology is the law of all.

Philosophical Lineage:
What I’m about to say might raise some eyebrows. I’m about to compare my works to others. Some you may know, or at least heard of, and some you may not. The key takeaway from this isn’t putting myself into the arena with them and lauding myself; it’s putting my work into the same arena and drawing parallels between them, so you can see how they relate and maybe figure out why you like them.

The short of it: my work thinks like philosophy, moves like an epic, and bleeds like a confessional.

Comparisons:
Nietzsche—creation through destruction, will as hammer, meaning forged in ruin; the hum of defiance even when everything collapses. Can you think of anyone in my books who’s like that?

Jung—psychic realism; shadow and archetypes; characters as mythic expressions of interior conflict; stories as eruptions from a collective well. I don’t write characters as archetypes; I craft haunted characters that break archetype molds.

Kierkegaard—dread and choice; acting without certainty and paying in blood; the terror and dignity of determining who or what you are. How many people have paid for the choices they’ve made? I could definitely name a few…

Homer & Milton—epic in scale, a theological tragedy, mortals defying gods, gods trapped in their own order; sympathetic villainy, using language as an edge to cut. If you haven’t seen the gods yet, you will. Or maybe you have already and just don’t know it.

I point these out to give you a wider view. I don’t imitate them, at least not intentionally; I extend their projects into the modern psyche, redefining them for our times, and changing their template to suit my style. My wars aren’t over Troy or Heaven; they’re fought within the human condition, and amongst the gods that have come to destroy them.

Why there’s nothing exactly like the DLS:
Most books trade or stay on an axis. Remember those guardrails we talked about? That’s where most hover. Every once in a while, you get mold breakers—Abercrombie, Martin, Tolkien; these writers forever altered the way we read books, much like Lucas did for movies with Star Wars. Authors drop one or two things of my four pillars, and I never find a book that I’m 100% satisfied with. Here are the things they usually hit:

Realism without myth.
Sensuality without meaning.
Myth without morality.
Philosophy without blood.

I refuse those trades. That’s why I don’t slot neatly beside anyone. The closest thematic neighbors (not style-identical): Cormac McCarthy (mythic violence, biblical cadence), R. Scott Bakker (psychological realism + epic theology), Mark Lawrence (self-condemning protagonists), Richard Morgan (erotic candor + existential grit), Andrzej Sapkowski (humanity under monsters), Tamsyn Muir (genre-bending necromantic wit), Jeff VanderMeer (consciousness under collapse).

Even some of my favorites, Martin and Abercrombie, only share a cul-de-sac with me—and I love both of their works. And I come away feeling like, “Damn it, they were so close to perfect!” Martin digs into moral consequence but stays human-scale with politics, tragedy, and emotion. Abercrombie nails cynicism and cost but avoids the metaphysics. I go further, codifying the moral law beneath my characters, fusing the story with psychology and myth, and making intimacy itself a wildcard in that system.

Call me dark, or call me unmarketable, but I call it real, and I’d rather be real and live in obscurity than die in infamy by not staying true to what I feel makes a damn good book.

Well, this is the part where we draw to a close—for the free readers. The rest lives on for the Ko-dons. You got to see the architecture, the madness that brings a deeper insight into my writing, how it hits the readers, and the pillars of my storytelling. For those who came for this ride, I hoped you enjoyed it, and for my Founders, let’s pick up where we left off…