The Inspiration Behind The Violet Ticket

“If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer…
If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.”
— Shel Silverstein

I took those words quite literally.

Shel Silverstein was the first writer who made me want to tell stories. His words, playful yet profound, felt like an invitation into something bigger—a world where imagination had no limits, where stories could be anything, everything, and sometimes, things we weren’t ready to face. I’ve been dreaming up stories ever since. And I mean that in the most literal sense.

Most of my storytelling comes from vivid dreams. Some are strange, some are haunting, and some linger in the back of my mind for years before I know what to do with them. But The Violet Ticket? That one started with a single dream.

The “chewing gum” scene in Book One came to me one night. There was tension, unspoken power, something unsettling and yet magnetic between these two strangers. I woke up with that moment burned into my mind, and I wrote it down. I had no idea who she was yet, no idea where the story would take her. But that single scene became the foundation for everything that followed.

This book—this entire series—is my dream (literally) come true.

Writing as an Exploration of the Mind

When I started writing The Violet Ticket, I wasn’t just telling a story. I was exploring something deeper—parts of my own mind, my own fears, my own understanding of love, power, and control. It was raw, uncomfortable, and at times, terrifying.

There were moments where I worried about how people would see me after reading it. I don’t write about perfect love stories or happily-ever-afters. I write about difficult emotions, hard choices, and the reality of feeling trapped by the decisions we make. Because sometimes, walking away isn’t easy. Sometimes, the things we crave—love, protection, validation—come at a cost.

Life isn’t clean. It’s messy, brutal, and full of contradictions. There’s devastation, grief, trauma, mental illness. There isn’t always a hero.

Lux: A Story of BPD, Trauma, and the Need to Be Loved

At its core, The Violet Ticket is about a girl who is drowning in the weight of her past. Lux isn’t just a character—she’s a deep exploration of where trauma and unresolved pain can take someone. She experiences the highs and lows of borderline personality disorder (BPD) and PTSD, two things that shape the way she moves through the world.

With BPD, emotions don’t just come and go—they consume, they crash, they shift so fast it feels impossible to keep up. One moment, there’s overwhelming love, the next, unbearable pain. Fear of abandonment, identity struggles, impulsivity—it all intertwines into something that makes life feel like a constant battle between wanting to be free and wanting to be held down by someone who won’t leave.

Lux is unpredictable, reckless, deeply emotional—because that’s the reality of BPD. Her story isn’t meant to be easy. It’s meant to be real.

Her life is a cycle of chaos and rare, fleeting moments of beauty—because that’s how trauma shapes people. She wants to be loved, valued, protected, but she also wants control over herself. And those two things don’t always coexist peacefully.

A Beautiful Disaster

Lux’s story is a devastating one, but there’s beauty in between the chaos. In the small moments of comfort, in the rare instances of peace, in the complexity of the relationships she clings to. She is messy, complicated, raw—and that’s what makes her real.

I write because I believe in telling these kinds of stories. The ones that don’t fit neatly into the idea of what romance should be. The ones that challenge the idea that love is always safe, that desire is always pure, that people are either good or bad. The ones that explore what happens when you crave something even when you know it might ruin you.

So, if you’re a dreamer, a wisher, a liar…welcome in. There are stories to tell. And this is just the beginning.