Daring to Show My Dark Side

I never planned to write my debut about the Devil.

- LINDA KAO

The characters who filled my short stories would be appalled: Annie, who blew kisses to her little brother during his difficult first day of school; Curley, a mail-carrying hedgehog whose uniform mishap helped him learn the freedom of flexibility; Freddy, who discovered his superpower of helping others. These gentle souls would look askance at my young adult protagonist, a teenage boy trained to burn those claimed by Lucifer, and wonder how I had strayed so far from my usual path. After all, my characters were meant to be kind and sweet, not lurking in the shadows with matches in their hands.

Let me rephrase: These were the types of characters I believed I was supposed to write.

The walls around my storytelling began quite innocently. As the second child of four, I was not the oldest, not the youngest, not the only boy. I became the quiet one who kept the peace, bringing home straight A's and perfect attendance records. I graduated at the top of my high school class and behaved in my Stanford dorm, eschewing parties for midnight conversations and homework sessions. When I decided to pursue a career in education, it seemed the perfect fit. I would work with children, sharing the joy of learning and helping them grow into their best selves. 

This perspective spilled into my stories, and I wanted my characters to be their best selves, too. Writing is such a personal experience they felt like reflections of pieces of me, and I made their mistakes small, the consequences reversible, their lives only gently ruffled. They always tried their best, and when they fell short, they learned their lessons, righted their wrongs, and moved on unscathed.