Welcome to the strange world that lives in my head, where I hope you'll enjoy all the stories I write. My literary world is a place where you'll find love and affection among a diverse cast of characters. But before you begin reading these tales, there are a couple of things you might want to know to be fully prepared for the quirks of mine that come through in each person I write.
After 13 years in the professional wrestling industry, numerous car accidents, and a gym mishap, I've suffered through more concussions than I'll ever remember, which makes me a neurodivergent author. Because of that, I have a few peculiarities that make my writing a little different than the norm for the romance genre I love. For example, I prefer long books I can really get lost in, and therefore write epically long stories. I believe a novel should be no less than 120,000 words, and have yet to write one under 150,000 words, so please don't get upset that none of my books are quick reads.
I also have a problem with certain words that trigger my anxiety, causing me to use them my way instead of following the conventional way they're normally used or written. The most specific examples of this are ya'll and lay/laying/laid. Whoever put ya'll in the dictionary as y'all is obviously not from a southern state to know that it's not actually a contraction of you all, and came up with their spelling based on what they heard us southerners saying. Ya'll is actually a contraction of ya all, not you all. If it were a contraction of you all, then according to the rules of making contractions, it would be you'll, which is already taken for you will. Ya is an alternate word meaning you, which is used quite often in conversations where I'm from, so I've taken it upon myself to form the contraction the correct way, leaving the first "a" with the word "Ya" and using the apostrophe to replace the second "a" in "all" the way I was taught to make contractions in elementary school. So, in all my books, you will see ya'll quite often, and any editor who tries to change it to y'all will be promptly fired.
As for lay/laying/laid, you will also see that I often use those terms when most people would say I should use lie/lying/lied, as in "She laid down." I'm sorry for any anguish I might cause for any English teachers or grammar perfectionists who read my books, but no matter how hard I've tried to use lay/laying/laid for inanimate objects and lie/lying/lied for people, I just can't get my mind to accept that lie/lying/lied aren't referring to telling falsehoods, which is something I absolutely can't stand. For those who've read my books, you may notice that I poked fun at myself a little in "Dion's Dream Girl" by giving Julie that same idioscrinsisity, so I hope you can understand that we all have our quirks and laugh along with me as I try not to annoy ya'll too much with mine.
Happy Reading,
Leah
