Representation and Use of Marginalized Groups

Appropriation vs. Bloodlines and Lived Experiences

In my Null life, I write stories rooted in bloodlines, silence, survival—and about  the things we’re told not to say aloud.

The Cursed Ones weaves together characters who are Autistic, Black, Creole, Deaf, Immigrant, Native, and more—

identities often distorted, erased, or flattened in speculative fiction.

These characters are not diversity for show.

They are the result of a lifetime of listening to silences, chasing truth through the gaps, and reclaiming what was taken.

I am a genetic genealogist specializing in ADOS communities in the American South and other marginalized people living in the borderlands of New York.

I was raised speaking with a Louisiana accent. Due to years of speech therapy, you’ll only hear it when I’m tired.

(Actually, you’ll probably hear it better than I can with my hearing aids).

My ancestral tree is made of Palatine German settlers, Quebecois trappers, Bantu roots, and Haudenosaunee kin—

connections fragmented by abuse, slavery and survival.

As an Autistic person my neurodivergence is not incidental to how I write. It is the loom upon which every thread of my story is woven.

The languages, cultures, and rhythms in this book are used with care. They are not decorative—they are essential.

I have done my best to honor each origin and echo, to stay true to the spirits of both language and legacy.

That said, translations vary, and meanings shift depending on usage, tone, and scene.

This is not comfortable work. Writing across lines of trauma and history never should be. But I do it with caution, reverence, and relentless research.

I write from the inside out, not looking in from a distance, but walking alongside the questions that never fail to make me think…question...believe.

I believe in ghosts, in genetic memory, and in the power of story to unbury what still matters. This series is one way I honor that.

If something isn’t translated or presented the way you would have done it, I ask for grace. The choices were made with thought, deep respect, and love.

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