This past week three people asked about my “raw and brutal fiction.” 

One person asked if it meant gory or horror. Another asked if it was in reference to my “seduction, spicy” content (meaning my collection of naughty novellas). The third, just asked outright. 

What does “raw and brutal fiction” mean? 

The Merriam-Webster defines raw as “unprepared or imperfectly prepared for use” or “not being in polished, finished, or processed form;” brutal as “cold, cold-blooded,” “harsh, severe,” “unpleasantly accurate and incisive,” “very bad or unpleasant,” and “grossly ruthless or unfeeling.” 

Raw

When I first started publishing my short stories onto my then blog, Shockingly Me, in 2015 I wasn’t editing them.* They were at their core raw in terms of being imperfectly prepared for use. They also were that other kind of raw, emotionally chaffed if you will. They were stories about women who killed, who fucked, who were the accidental “other woman.” There were lines that could be considered auto-biographical, but also wholly from my imagination. The results of a life I didn’t know wasn’t “normal.” 

Brutal

In some ways, channeling those experiences––good, bad, or indifferent––that have made me me, bred stories that were brutal. Whether they were gory, cold, or severe in murderous women, abusive men, or self-harm; they touched a nerve and then did it again to see if you liked it. 

My stories reflected me as I moved through life. In those darkest ones, the unpleasantly accurate portrayal of my PTSD and the depression looming around it are on full display. (If you’d like the highlight reel of my PTSD years those are on full display in stories written/posted between 2018 – 2023). They’re brutal in a different sense; there’s no severed hands, heads, or male genitalia––no one died. 

What do I write now? 

The implication of now meaning that my PTSD is over, the fog of depression lifted, and I’m liven a life I love? 

I still have my imagination. The one that will always ask if anyone wants to take a guess at how many dead bodies are in each and every storage unit I drive by. The same one that walked into my local BBQ place to ask about seasonings for pork and if a smoker could be kept inside (note for the feds: it was my “if Nancy Drew liked BDSM and had to solve a workplace mystery:). 

My short stories range all over human emotions and most of them are still being posted raw and unedited. 

My novels in order of first drafts written touch on: 

• a young woman with possessive friends and a cheating boyfriend, who loses her ability to tell real life from her nightmares and has to figure it out before her and her friends end up dead (📖 The Faces She Sees, 2025)
• if Nancy Drew liked BDSM and had to solve a workplace mystery before all of her co-workers end up fatally cooked
• what happens when one man’s desperation to fix his family turns deadly (📕 Silent Echo, 2026)
• six friends walk into a reunion and four leave in body-bags in this Clue-like thriller
• what happens when five young men who have never been told no tap into the ancient power of Apollo on a college campus with missing students, inappropriate professors, and one journalist determined to prove her worth against the odds

Over those five books there are: 

19 adult deaths, 2 infant deaths, 1 (off-page) animal death, instances of sexual assault, rape, murder, betrayal, and humans being horrible. There are 3 ambiguous endings, 1 happy ending, and 1 ending that is uncomfortably close to real life. 

While they’re edited I think it’s safe to say that my writing still has its brutality (not something I strive for, but here we are). 

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading my little conversation with myself, thank you for learning more about me. I hope you enjoy it here in my unapologetically dark space on the internet 🖤 

Shockingly yours,
Elizabeth 

* Fun fact, my blog/2015 is the time I started counting which is where that 250 short stories in my bio comes from 🙂

Citation

“Raw Definition & Meaning.” Merriam-Webster. Accessed May 16, 2026. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/raw. 

“Brutal Definition & Meaning.” Merriam-Webster. Accessed May 16, 2026. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/brutal.