Hola, beautiful people! I’ve just returned from the beautiful town of Tepoztlán, México, where I took part in a Batalá Mundo event, playing with drummers from all over the world for Día de Muertos. What a phenomenal experience, and what a gorgeous place! With all the stone bridges, rock walls, and cobblestone streets, I could have been in Europe.
This month’s IWSG question asks if there are any recurring themes in our work, and for me, this one was easy to answer. The past comes back to haunt us is the overarching theme of the majority of my work. I didn’t plan it that way; it just happened. Particularly since I’ve written so many ghost stories, and a ghost without a motive is boring.
I love weaving historical facts into my fiction, whether it’s the intentional genocide of indigenous peoples in the United States for Those Who Came Before, or the systematic murder of young girls in China for City of Ghosts, or the treatment of those stricken with the bubonic plague in Italy for The Girl Who Talks to Ghosts. The way humans treat other humans is endless fodder for vengeance-seeking spirits.
Though I’m deliberately not heavy handed, I do hope to educate people about some of our darker history, especially since it still impacts us today. One of my biggest drivers for writing Those Who Came Before was to spread awareness about what happened to indigenous peoples when the colonists arrived. I’ve had readers come up to me and tell me they never knew about indigenous children being stolen from their families en masse and forced into abusive “residential schools” or how diseases like smallpox were deliberately spread among indigenous communities. If I help to open the eyes of even one person, that book was a success, as far as I’m concerned.
With some of my later work, I’ve been toying with the theme of isolation, and how our “connecting” technologies have us feeling more alone than ever before.
What themes do you explore in your writing, and was this a deliberate choice, or did they pick you?
The purpose of the Insecure Writers’ Support Group is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. 
Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds. To see a full list of IWSG authors, click here.
PS: If you’d like to see my new cozy mystery unfold as I write it, please hop on over to Patreon. It’s totally free to join, and I could really use a more vocal cheering section!
Dear Miss Moncrieff. Wow! Loved the picture, what a happy smiling group. You strike me as the sort of person who makes friends wherever you go. Me, if I had gone, would be the one sitting alone just watching, never taking part. I commend your ability to ‘slot’ in with the fun. I’m so glad you had such a wonderful time.
My themes are always the same, Horror. I can’t really put a more definitive title on it than that. As for ideas, they drift along through the ether and occasionally land on me when I least expect it. If I waited for the full story to take root I’d never begin to write, so I just start typing and hope the rest of the plot will take hold at some point along the way. Very haphazard I know, but it’s the only way I know how.
Take care.