Persephone. Both the Goddess of Spring and the Queen of the Underworld. I have Big Persephone Energy, and I don’t just say that as a Lore Olympus fan*. Being of mixed race, I’ve been between two worlds from the very start. I was born into two worlds and fit into neither, and that does something to a girl’s energy.

And then, having been raised so very religious (a horror about which I have previously written), I always harbored a naughty fantasy of being the day-living princess taken by the dark prince. I voraciously consumed any story that referenced or retold the Hades and Persephone myth. Like maybe Persephone and her modern counterparts were having way more fun than I’d ever had. Of course, I felt guilty for even considering such a thing, but consider it I did. (The start of a toxic obsession with bad boys that lasted for way longer than it was cute, but that’s a whole other set of confessions.)

Anyway, do I want to see your bright field of flowers? Yes. Am I drawn to the cemetery at the edge of it, dark and overgrown with twisted brush so sinister in appearance that might have sprung from Hell itself? Also, yes. I paint pictures of pretty flowers and I write morbid tales.

Even my tattoos reflect my respect for duality.

And then there’s my career: corporate tech writer by day; dark fiction writer (and a creative in general) any time I’m not on company time.

How Did I Get Here?

I have a degree in Integrative Arts, but a girl needs to eat. A friend advised me that if I wanted to pay off the past (student loans), prepare for the future (retirement, ha!), and have any kind of fun in the moment (vacation, what?), the creative roles I was pursuing weren’t ever going to pay for it, and that I should try technical writing because tech jobs always pay more. And I didn’t have to do it forever, just until I was in a better financial situation.

I took that friend’s advice, and it turned out that I was a pretty good technical writer. And not just that; technical writing was refreshing in a way, too, because it’s clean and straight forward. As a technical writer, I just need to be accurate and concise while adhering to the given style guide. Easy stuff in comparison to world building and character development. And, perhaps because I work from home, I adapted well to the corporate environment. People valued my opinions and what I could do for the company. In truth, becoming a successful corporate technical writer was far easier than trying to be a dark fiction writer, and for far more money than I’d ever seen as a creative. And because I’d already put my book out (more on that coming soon), perhaps I’d already left my creative mark on the world. Why shouldn’t things be easy and lucrative for a while?

I was comfortable.

I fell asleep.

For a decade.

Persephone in Perpetuity?

The thing about waking up and getting back out there and rebuilding a creative community of artists and writers that I look up to and think of as successful is that I get to hear just how many of them talk about their day jobs. It seems that no one gets to quit their day job anymore.

No worries. Maybe I’ll find a creative day job. It won’t pay as much, of course, but my financial situation isn’t what it used to be. Maybe I don’t need to make that kind of money anymore. Well, AI didn’t take my current job, but it did take most of the jobs I would have wanted to go back to. Those jobs never paid much, but now they barely exist. And what I really want to do won’t be found on LinkedIn anyway. I have to build it for myself.

But I also need to fund it.

So, when it comes to my career, in line with every other aspect of my life, I will likely be Persephone in perpetuity. I’ll earn a paycheck working in the day-living corporate world, but when I’m done? I’m a dark fiction writer who’s been gone too long. It’s time for me to return to the Underworld where I belong.

*Wanna help a girl eat? Buy Lore Olympus through my Bookshop.org Affiliate shop and I'll earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Art Note:

While I was researching at Google University to remind myself of how many pomegranate seeds Persephone ate in the Underworld so that I could represent that in the painting, I found that there was some debate about it. I don’t know why I thought I recalled from my freshman level Classics courses that she’d had two, but since ‘two’ was not one of the numbers in the debate, I ultimately landed on six.

But it got me thinking, and I don’t believe there’s any scholarly source to back this (feel free to drop any links that either crush or confirm my musings in the comments), but I like to think that while Persephone spent the winter with Hades and the summer with Demeter, spring and fall were hers. That she had the spring to do all of her goddess stuff before even thinking of dealing with her mother, and the fall to get some rest before returning to her husband.

Oh! Did I mention that my husband and my mother share a birthday?

Yeah.

I’ve got Big Persephone Energy.