My name is Gabi, and I write about outsiders.

  Let me tell you a little about the kinds of stories I write.

  I write dense fantastic worlds filled with magic, superheroes, robots, magical girls, fairies, angels, demons, vampires, witches and wizards. I also write explicable worlds based on logical, consistent systems. I write modern urban fantasy, meaning that the stories I write take place in a time very much like the one we’re currently living in, only in worlds that are filled with magic. I believe that the chance to explore wonderful, fantastical worlds filled with whimsy and magic doesn't end when you grow out of being a child. It's not something you should have to give up as you approach the uncertainty of impending adulthood, or even afterwards, when you find yourself an uncertain adult.

  My worlds are always open, whether you’re thirteen or thirty seven, or seventy three, or a hundred and seventy three. They're open to girls and boys, as well as people who don't identify as either. They're open to men and women, and everyone else who wants to read them. They are place where people can safely explore their fantasies, dream about the future, and simply enjoy themselves. I want them to be a place where people can be happy.

  My work is informed by my love of kawaii culture and cute things, of magical girls, of giant robots, my lifelong relationship with video games, and my regular engagement with otaku culture. I want my stories to be the sorts of stories that anyone can feel comfortable reading. I want to draw and write unbearably cute and moe heroines that people will want to marry, as well as male leads that are compelling, cool, interesting, and profoundly attractive. I want people to find someone they want to be in my work, as well as someone they want to love.

  I want to write about real redemption, the chance for people who have done terrible things to change themselves into better people, and the transformations all people go through as they grow up, as they grow older, as they grow into themselves. I am committed to writing grief, and loss, and pain, because they are natural elements of the world, but anyone who reads my work can be confident that it will all come out right in the end, no matter how terrible things seem at any given time. In as much as I write endings, I write happy ones.

  I want to give you the chance to feel things, because feeling things, even the terrible things, the painful things, the frightening and scary things, the things that make you rage and despair — these things are all good things to feel, because feeling itself is the best thing of all. Let me help you feel them while keeping a hold on your tether, so you can venture out the the edge of the abyss, and know that I have you, that you are safe. You can look into the darkness, and still find your way home.

  More than anything, I am interested in the story that unfolds after so many stories finish. I will show you what happens after the happy end. I will show you day after day in joy and in sadness, happy ending after happy ending, as time just keeps on unfolding. I’ll give you a story that’s satisfying, that you want to keep going on forever.

  Together, let’s find out just how far we can see.

  When I was a little girl, I really struggled to find the sort of stories I wanted to read. I struggled to find the sort of heroines I wanted to believe in, the ones I could cheer for, and hold in my secret heart as the kind of girl I aimed to be.

  I couldn't find the sorts of stories I wanted to read, so I started writing my own. In the beginning, everything I wrote was for one audience: me. I couldn't find enough of the sorts of things I wanted to read, and so I set about making it myself.

  Along the way, I wrote all kinds of stories in all kinds of circumstances, with all kinds of people. I wouldn't be the person I am now, with the ability to write the way that I do, if I hadn't experienced all that pleasure and happiness, all of that grief and trauma. It has been a long path to get to where I am now, at last working on my own independent IP for publication.

  So let me tell you a little more about the kinds of stories that I write.

  As a person who has had a lifelong struggle with suicidal ideation due to being bipolar, as well as a long term struggle with chronic pain and illness, I wanted the chance to write heroines who struggled with these same issues. People who deal with chronic mental health issues and chronic illnesses deserve the chance to be heroines. They deserve the chance to be heroes. I wanted to write stories where their heroism was ordinary, and not astonishing.

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  One of the things that has always been the most terrifying to me personally is helplessness. Inevitably, we’ll all find ourselves in circumstances in our own lives where we feel that we’re up against an impossible force that we can't possibly win against. It can be death, poverty, illness, depression, there are a thousand things that can make you feel small and powerless.

  But fiction has the ability to light the fire of courage in anyone’s heart, to give them a feeling of control, to give them a feeling of hope. That’s why it's so important to me to write stories about physically small heroines with their own bags full of issues fighting against impossible odds and winning. These are the heroes that save the world. I don't want people to look and them and think ‘how unlikely.’ I want them to look and think ‘that’s what heroines look like.’

  I want my readers to hug their books to their chests and say with happiness and relief, “she’s just like me.” To sit back and fold their hands together and think “I’m just like him.”

  Because all my readers can be heroines too. They can be heroes. They are already, some of them simply don't know it yet.

  My stories focus on personal relationships. These are the things that have driven the whole of my life, and so my fiction revolves around them. I write about the relationships between lovers, and friends, and parents, and children, siblings, and extended families. I write about relationships long past the flush of the early chase and the first furtive kisses. I write about relationships as they unfold and grow over years, decades, often centuries. That's because when I was a little girl, I was always dissatisfied when the story ended when the main couple finally admitted their love for one another.

  That's not when the story ends! That's when the story begins.

  Ugh! Unacceptable! I will do something about that! Just you wait!

  I'm a sex positive person, and this carries through in my work. I think sex is an ordinary element of human life, and I write about it as such. I write everything from mildly naughty scenes to very explicit sex, but this is all clearly marked. Since I do want for my work to be accessible to young people, I offer my work in two forms: a version that’s meant for all teens and up, and an 18+ version. I realize that sex is something that's very ordinary for teenagers to be interested in, and that fiction offers an extremely safe way to explore different feelings and ideas about sex. I want for my readers to be able to read my work knowing that it’s well researched and based in reality. It’s also sexy, because I believe that erotica can make your heart race while at the same time not being filled with ludicrous errors and misinformation. Above all things, I stress consent and personal responsibility.

  There’s certainly nothing to make you more hot and bothered than responsibility, is there?

  (Okay, maybe that’s just me. But come on. Responsibility. You know you’re into it.)

  I also think it's perfectly normal to not want to engage with sex, because not everyone is interested in it. That's perfectly okay, and also reflected in my work.

  Many, many people in the world struggle with depression, suicidal ideation, and chronic mental health issues. Some of these people have no access to the medical care they need, whether it be because of a lack of funds, a lack of qualified doctors, or because they are being denied access by someone in their life. Fictional stories about teenaged girls saving the world are no substitute for therapy and appropriate treatment, but books are very powerful.

  Almost all suicides occur because people feel their situations are hopeless, and that they're completely alone in the world, that no one understands their pain and despair. These suicides are particularly common in teenagers and young adults because their brains haven't fully matured, and they lack complete impulse control. They may also be dealing with abuse, an intolerant or controlling environment, and the powerless feeling of being a teenager when older adults make all decisions, even when these decisions are objectively negative and dangerous.

  Studies have shown that the care and attention of even one person is enough to radically change the trajectory of a young person’s life. I don't have magical powers myself, and I can't be there to hold everyone when they cry hopelessly, lost in their own, private darkness. What I can do, is write books, and let my voice be there for the people who need it.

  As a survivor of abuse and chronic depression, I want to be the person who holds their hand in the dark, the person who lets them know that they're not alone, that somewhere, out in the vastness of space and time, that another person has understood them and loved them.

  Books are curious things. They can go places people can't go, into dark, lonely spaces where people dwell alone with their fear and heartache.

  I will write books to go to those places, to strike a spark, to light a light, so that those people can see that I'm holding out my hand to them.

  Won't you help me?