Last week, I announced on social media that Sick has received the Gold Award for Fiction from Literary Titan. I’m honored and thrilled that Sick, which has always been a fan favorite in its original series form, has earned this recognition in its new edition from Blood Bound Books.
Literary Titan featured me on their blog to ask me a few questions about Sick. Here, I talk about where the idea for Sick came from, what it’s really about, and why it speaks to so many readers on so many levels.
Author Interview: Devotion and Duty
Originally published on Literary Titan
Sick is a haunting psychological horror that follows a marriage unraveling into madness as devotion, illness, and manipulation, and blurs into a claustrophobic battle for control and belonging. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
This story was born from a nightmare. I dreamt I was a woman whose life was decaying around her as she cared for her sickly husband. By the end of the dream, she discovered the man she loved and trusted was far more ill than she could imagine. Her disorientation and fear pulled at me, and I knew I had to write the story.
How did you balance the ambiguity of John’s illness so the reader constantly questions what’s real and what’s manipulation?
I wanted to put people inside Susan’s mind, in the perspective of your typical person who feels the duty to care for their loved ones, no matter what is required. She has let her husband’s illness take over her life, so much so that she no longer has one. Of course, caregivers think, this person is sick, they need me. But what is the cost to yourself? When does devotion and duty become co-dependency? You can only be manipulated if you allow people to do so. How much of it is your own fault?
The book relies heavily on atmosphere and sensory detail rather than overt scares. How do you approach building tension through subtlety rather than shock?
I think the dark, quiet desires, motivations, and needs of our inner selves are more terrifying than your typical monsters, serial killers, or jump scares. It’s the realization that the frame you put around your life story to keep you safe could be a lie, and that you have been preyed upon by those you love and trust. It’s being slowly bled dry and not knowing until it’s too late. Worst of all is realizing you had a hand in your own demise.
What do you hope readers take away about love, neediness, and the moral gray zones that exist inside unhealthy relationships?
I hope readers will think more deeply about what they’re giving and taking in relationships, to be aware when someone is manipulating and using them, and where they themselves might be abusing a person in their life in a mental or emotional way.
Most victims can’t conceive that someone who claims to love them is silently exploiting them for their own gain. Likewise, abusers often don’t know that what they are doing is toxic. These are survival mechanisms they learned as children.
That is why I showed both Susan’s and John’s sides of the story. Neither of them is innocent.
Unfortunately, once confronted, not all abusers will acknowledge to themselves, much less to others, that they were damaging the people around them. It takes a brave person, a genuinely good-hearted and self-aware person, to be willing to admit their flaws and work to change them. Most narcissists and psychopaths do not have any empathy for others, nor true self-awareness that extends beyond their own self-importance.
I hope this story will wake up victims to possible abuse and tip off abusers that maybe they are the villain, and not the hero, of their own story.
I appreciate the reviews and support Sick has gotten so far. Thank you so much.
And thanks to Literary Titan for the opportunity to talk about Sick and for the Gold Award for Fiction.
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