The Bleeding Woods: A Horror Story That Healed My Heart

Our art heals us, even when we don’t know how, when or why.

If you asked me to describe my debut novel in just a few sentences, I’d probably stammer through something along the lines of…

The Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things meets Caroline Kepnes’s You in a story where a young woman’s fight for redemption lands her in a forest ruled by a creature isolation has turned evil, a creature who lusts for her heart. Also inspired by the atmospheric horror of The Blair Witch Project and the dark, lovesick yearning of Erik in The Phantom of the Opera, The Bleeding Woods aims to spellbind and terrify its reader in the same whisper-laced breath.

If you asked for a bit more about the characters involved, I’d say something more like this:

Clara Lovecroft isn’t human, and she’s just run out of the medication that helps her look that way. As she chases its mysterious origin, she finds herself in a swath of woods hiding a sinister denizen behind its trees. JS-7R is an experiment gone rogue. Everyday, he watches the strip of asphalt that divides his land for someone to kill. The last thing he expected to come through was someone to love, someone destiny-bound to him by an origin rooted in death. To make her his, he must convince her to surrender the last of her humanity, and take out her travel companions one-by-one. Separating Clara from her overprotective best friend, her fiery estranged sister and her human heart won’t be easy, but JS-7R’s got more than a few advantages woven into his monstrous blood.

I still struggle to condense years of creative rumination and months of constant writing into quick, concise pitches. I understand the importance of keeping a handful at the ready, but I’m so grateful for places and spaces where books can be explained with a bit more breathing room. Recently, I’ve had the joy of partaking in some podcast interviews about The Bleeding Woods, and each made my heart soar higher.

Honoring the incomprehensible vastness of a story, one that exists far before the first page and far beyond the last, gives an author the chance to re-experience their piece in a whole new light. In my case, it’s helped me to understand just how The Bleeding Woods was working to heal me during the difficult time in which I wrote it. It stealthily evaded my conscious perception, hiding its intentions behind horror, gore and the allures of dark romance.

[TW: Mention of Eating Disorders & Depression.]

To put it simply, while I was distracted by a devilishly handsome, morally-black forest demon, The Bleeding Woods was helping me process, heal and alchemize the pain of an eating disorder that nearly cost me my life. For that reason, this book wasn’t easy to write. If I look closely, I can see how even the prose bears the pain. It echoes the condition of my mind at the time, sometimes in feverish denial, sometimes… outright starving.

I was desperate to distract myself from the cold, rigid truths of what I needed to face after leaving my keyboard. So, while it was available, I let the words bloom in flowery excess. I couldn’t concern myself with how hungry I was if I was too busy finding ways to describe a scary forest. I couldn’t think about my calories, or lack thereof, if I was lost and confused in a gory narrative. There were days when I’d end a writing session and just cry. The tears would fall with reckless abandon, and I’d let them, even if I couldn’t pinpoint their prompt.

Each chapter, in its own unique way, was a step on the path toward a healed and happier me. I just didn’t know it yet. I didn’t know it by a long shot.

Still, in Clara, I found the strength to face fears I’d been running from for such a long time. Just as I’d been restricting meals to maintain a specific form, she’d been taking pills. Just as I’d been holding myself to the cruel standards of society, she’d been doing everything to fit in with said society. Just as I’d suppressed all my anger toward the system that hurt me, a system that’s killed so many, Clara had been doing the same.

Using the horror genre as a cathartic release, I was able to approach my emotions in a healthy way, not a self-destructive one. Instead of putting all of my sadness and despair in a box beneath my bed, I put it into a book. Instead of letting it fester and rot, I let it flow and fertilize the flowers of future creativity.

At its core, The Bleeding Woods was fueled by my desire to face the scariest thoughts in my head, the ones telling me to stop eating or all around disappear, with kindness instead of fear, hopelessness and hatred. It was a letter to the parts of me I thought I’d never be able to love, the monster of authenticity that Clara spends so much of her story running from.

The very first line reveals that when she let the monster out, Clara killed her parents. Isn’t that what so many of us dread? Not killing our loved ones, but hurting or disappointing them with our truest, most authentic selves? We’re afraid of killing our relationships with them by showing up as who we really are, unfiltered and unedited. We fear the repercussions of disobeying the rules they’ve set and the rules set by the world at large.

There are a few other themes at play, but I don’t want to go too far into them. Of course, I don’t want to spoil the story, but I also feel a specific kind of magic is sparked when stories are shared. The Bleeding Woods may mean something very different when filtered through your perception, and I think that’s wonderful. I think that’s how our books go on to heal others in the exact way they need it. They move beyond their author in ways as countless as there are humans on Earth.

Just to touch briefly on what The Bleeding Woods means to me, I’ll try out some fun, pitch-coded language again:

The Bleeding Woods is a story where pain can transform into many things. Darkness can turn to light, trauma can turn to empathy, rage can turn to compassion. And sadly… vice versa. While Clara and JS-7R develop very real superpowers, the greatest of them all is one we hold beyond the pages. It is the ability to heal, grow, and change with kind intentions instead of vengeful ones.In JS-7R lies the cruel temptation of blackening one’s heart, of succumbing to hate and despair, in the face of trauma. In Clara lives the hope for a world where radical self-acceptance and an open-hearted approach can heal almost anything. You might not be able to love the darkness out of someone else, but you can always love it into your own personal light, and trust that that light will shine bright enough to make their shadows seem much smaller.

I definitely have a long way to go when it comes to pitching, but thanks to Clara, JS-7R and the whole Bleeding Woods family, I’m still here to do so.

I like to think of the creatives of the world as one big, beautiful hive mind. Our energy is in communication long before we meet one another in person. That’s another thing that kept me going, writing, eating and living. I worried there might be someone out there just like me, someone who might need to read this story as much as I needed to write it.

If it’s reached you, please know that no situation is hopeless, no pain is permanent, and with just a little love, everything can change. You can and will become the happiest, healthiest and most radiant version of yourself, you just need to find the bravery, even in the tiniest of sparks, to treat your darkness with kindness. Trust me, it can turn to light, and when you find that light, you’ll be unstoppable in every beautiful, blossoming way.

I believe in you, and for what it’s worth, I think you should, too.