About Athena L Falcon

Hazard Yet Forward: all journeys require that you leave something behind as you move forward into uncertainty.

Truer words were never said. I was delivered to the doorstep of Seton Hill University's MFA Writing Popular Fiction program on the tailwinds of a class 5 hurricane. In many ways, I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but it beat what I left behind.

My unique style of medically-tinged vocabulary in a stew of dyslexia produces a sensory experience of place and character. I'm not trying to create a voice: my mind spits out words, phrases, and concepts that most other sane people would run from, and I spend hours ironing out peculiarities. One consequence is that my writing is frequently described as literary, which is rather a punch in the gut to someone who graduated with an MFA in writing popular fiction.

I adjust.

Readers who enjoy my stories are intrigued with complex characters, interwoven plots, and multiple genres. I suppose you could take what I said about language and apply that to a mind bent on complications. If something can go wrong, I conjure something worse on the next page. It's not fluffy stuff, and far more likely to keep you up at night than to put you to sleep. (Cozy, it is not.) But if you enjoy experiencing a tight focus on misogyny, societal impact of infectious disease, and/or historical medical practice (particularly mid-Victorian), my writing might just be your cuppa. And if you've ever been at the handle end of a scalpel, I'm told the anatomic escapades are nothing short of hilarious. (Unfortunately, more than one non-medical person has wished they hadn't dug into a bowl of spaghetti when reading. I try to warn them.)

I am surrounded by love and compassion in a vibrant midwestern writer's community. I am grateful for their support.

May you become the person you were meant to be.