SPOILERS THROUGHOUT. I will try to be plot-vague, but specific enough to be useful. These are probably also out of order.

Overall statements of intent

I’m a white person writing about characters from a variety of fictional racial and cultural backgrounds. I strive to build complex characters, cultures and worlds that aren’t built on lazy shortcuts or the shortcomings of our own world, but I also bring in my own unconscious biases in this area. I welcome good-faith comment on my work, and seek to improve whenever I fall short.

The world in which the Healers books and any future spin-offs take place is intentionally one without homophobia or transphobia (and the rest of their archipelago of phobias), and as little ingrained sexism as I can consciously manage.

In other words, queer people exist, and it’s never a problem to anyone. Similarly, women are considered equal to men and always have been. My characters can be obnoxious for a vast array of reasons, but not because of another character’s sexuality, sex, gender or gender presentation. Their world doesn’t give such biases a pass. Being a homophobe/etc. isn’t a part of anyone’s religion or culture, no one considers it normal to be shitty about it, it just isn’t accepted and effectively doesn’t exist.

Why? It’s my story, and I decide how to build the world. So that’s how I built it. You can do that. It’s fiction.

That’s my goal while writing. I acknowledge that I bring in my own unconscious biases, welcome good-faith comment on those aspects as well, and seek to improve when I fall short.

I choose not to use sexual assault or the threat thereof as a plot point or backstory in my work. Part of that comes out of building gender equality into the setting; part of it is because I simply choose not to.

I don’t generally write about children in peril, though child death is mentioned in book 3 (The Healers’ Purpose).

 I don’t write about companion animals in peril. If they show up, they’re going to be okay.

It’s kind of a surprise to me that religion has such a big role in my work, because I’m not religious, and was raised with only the barest cursory gestures toward one. But belief ended up being a core part of one of the narrators of the Healers series, and so it’s pretty pervasive.

Details about the various religions and factions will eventually be outlined on the Lore pages of this site, but my point here is that none of the fictional religions in my work are intended as a commentary on or recommendation for any real-world religion. They’re all melanges of various cultural influences, wrapped around ideas/ethical frameworks that I thought it would be interesting to explore. That’s all.

The Healers series

 The most frequent content warnings for the Healers series overall are medical gore, depressive internal monologue (particularly in book 1), and rudeness sometimes bordering on fictional racism. One of the narrators is bisexual, and it comes up fairly frequently. (I count that as a positive TBH, but reviews have commented on it, so it may be worth noting.) There’s a lot of religious references in the series as well, primarily in book 1 but continuing throughout. One of the narrators is deeply religious, and the other is not; the differences between their worldviews are a part of their character arcs. The story itself doesn’t take a stance either way.

The Healers’ Purpose

• Swearing: mostly late in the book, a range of mostly mild ones.
• Two incidents of racist street harassment. No slurs, but definite aggression and hostility, including some shoving/grabbing.
• Medical gore, in line with previous books (on-page, a healer regrows some limbs, does some intestinal cancer surgery, and heals a serious burn)
• A healer character talks about losing patients, including/especially children
• An ongoing side plot about burnout
• One implication of / reference to domestic violence
• Mentions of various illnesses and injuries (broken bones, food poisoning, flu)
• One reference to consensual sex work
• One major violent incident late in the book (about 85-95% in): a series of fires cause a few deaths (not characters that the readers know), injuries, and extensive property damage. POV characters are in dangerous situations. It is implied that the fires were intentionally set, under circumstances that would make the incident a domestic terrorist attack.