"The Dark Beside You" and the end of an era

I have to admit that I teared up this morning. I knew that this post would be out and that my erotic fantasy short story The Dark Beside You would be released into the world. When I started writing The Dark Beside You, I had no idea it would be the first piece of writing I would put out there. I had no idea I would even offer it for others to read. When I sat down to write it, I was thinking about my own career as a university professor, what it felt to attain it, and what it felt to leave it.

For four years, I taught college chemistry. It was a career I absolutely loved. But it absolutely consumed me. Being a university professor was my identity. I didn't have any room for hobbies, my spouse, my dog, and even my health. I would work until my body literally couldn't handle it, crash over breaks, recover, and do it all over again. I left it at the height of the COVID pandemic when I just couldn't do it anymore.

Sometimes I wonder if I just didn't want it enough. That if I had worked harder, wanted harder, and sacrificed more, I could still have the career I worked over a decade for. We all have that doubt inside of us that at the end of the day, we just can't hack it. A doubt that there's something wrong with us because we don't have that drive or that grit to be the best. A doubt that we just would never measure up.

Moira, my protagonist of The Dark Beside You, doesn't have those doubts. She's willing to sacrifice everything to obtain tenure, at great cost to herself and her relationships. The Dark Beside You examines that, but it also examines the power you have to wield over yourself, and others, to get to those great heights and stay there. I'm not saying every professor in the university setting is like Moira. There are plenty of professors who are like her partner Leo. But I do think that you need to have a certain level of ambition and I've come to terms with the fact that I likely don't have that.

Leaving academia ultimately led me down the road to writing full-time. That loss brought about a great gain. It's given me a freedom I would never have had. But there is still that twinge of grief. I don't think that will go away no matter how successful I am as a writer.

I hope you love The Dark Beside You and I hope you love Moira as much as I do. She's ambitious, ruthless, and messy, but also passionate and fiery. You can get it for free here.