I was just checking the Amazon reviews of Much Ado about Muesli (Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat 9), and reader N M Harvey said this:
“I love it when authors write about what people who have PTSD go through. I live with extreme PTSD, so to be able to read about others who live through it, get through it, and get their HEA means a lot, so thank you, Karenna Colcroft; that means a lot to us who live it each and every day.”
My eyes got a little watery when I read that…
I also live with PTSD and CPTSD. (PTSD is post-traumatic stress from one traumatic incident or short-duration trauma; CPTSD is the result of long-term, ongoing traumatic situations, such as domestic abuse or severe bullying, from which there is no apparent escape. I have both.) In many of the stories I’ve written over the course of my life, since long before I started getting published, at least one character has exhibited signs of PTSD or CPTSD. Even before I knew what they were. Because that was what I lived with.
Around 2010 or 2011, when I was still being published by publishers, one of my publishers told me, “Stop writing damaged characters.” Because all of my books to that point had at least one main character who had experienced or was experiencing trauma. And in the romance world at that point in time, the prevailing wisdom was that readers didn’t want to read about “that kind of thing.” They wanted to escape, not read about realistic lives.
Then, in 2013, a different publisher published a book of mine that had my most traumatized character yet. She suffered flashbacks, panic attacks, and the strong belief that she didn’t deserve anything better than what had been done to her. It was a werewolf novel (a heterosexual one, but directly connected to that era’s version of the Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat series), and my traumatized character met her true mate in that book.
And was NOT instantly and immediately “cured” or “healed” of her trauma. She was still traumatized. She still struggled with her past and its ongoing effects. But she had someone who loved her as close to unconditionally as one person can love another, and who was willing to support her as she began to work toward healing.
Some people complained about that. Some said that she should have been “all better” once she found her mate.
But one reader sent me a message thanking me. She said she’d read so many hetero romances in which the female lead met “the one” and was magically, instantly cured of all trauma, with no more negative memories or effects… and reading all of those books had made her question whether she was broken beyond repair, because she had found her “the one,” a man who loved her, cared for her, made her feel safe… but she still lived with the effects of her trauma. Those books had convinced her that she would never get better.
Mine had shown her that healing wasn’t instantaneous, that even with “true love” someone might still live with the effects of their trauma… but that healing was *possible*. My book gave her hope while the others made her feel like there was no hope.
I never “stopped writing damaged characters.” Because as one of the leads of my Ebb & Flow series puts it, we aren’t damaged. We aren’t broken. We have been harmed, and we are dented, but we aren’t beyond repair.
In Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat, Tobias Rogan, the most powerful werewolf in the United States, lives with PTSD from growing up with an abusive father and being changed to a werewolf at age 15 while being assaulted by a man he trusted. Tobias was born in 1965, changed in 1980. In the “present day,” (whenever that is), he is STILL impacted by his trauma. And yet he has worked, he has gotten help and support, and by book 9, the one I quoted the review of at the beginning of this post, he is the leader of every single werewolf in the U.S. He has a true mate, Kyle Slidell, who lives with his own trauma due to events since being changed into a werewolf two-ish years ago (in series time). They love each other. That doesn’t erase their pasts. It doesn’t magically heal their brains or their minds. But it gives them support and a reason to keep going.
I write the books I didn’t have. I write the characters who survive things that some people can’t even fathom.
I write for those like me, who, to paraphrase this reviewer, live through it every day, get through it, and at least believe in happy endings.
