Red Haze is a novel that changed much over the time that I wrote it. But, I changed much during that time.
I had this novel scheduled to come out when my partner's younger brother passed away. For the last 18 years, he was my little brother, too. We were very close—we did everything together, and the loss was devastating. Suddenly, Red Haze became my way of working through the grief; it was a place to channel my sadness, anger, loss.
It took me months to return to writing. The novel was complete, and all I had to do was edit it. I would try, but I could not spare the emotional investment. The subject matter of Red Haze was very difficult to deal with, given my circumstances. Then one day, I had a new vision for Red Haze and instead of editing it, I rewrote it. That new vision is what I published.
Red Haze is a haunting psychological thriller that hovers between the spectral and the natural, blurring the lines between remembrance and regret, dedication and obsession, justice and revenge.
The characters in Red Haze deal with many of the issues I was battling. My goal was to create flawed characters. No one is perfectly good or perfectly bad. All the characters teeter, where they could go one way or the other, and their choices begin a domino effect they don't know how to stop. For me, grieving was like that: it's hard to stop once set in motion. It takes a tremendous, concerted effort to change the course. It takes actual decisions to force yourself to act, live. Writing Red Haze became my action, the finger that interrupted the falling dominoes.
Red Haze is a 99 cent ebook available at Amazon.
You can learn more about me, and see more writing, at www.adrianlilly.com.
"Author Adrian Lilly very skillfully weaves a multiplicity of threads, never once telegraphing in advance where a particular plot thread will end up. More than once I found myself on the edge of my seat, heart in mouth, awaiting an outcome. I'm eagerly anticipating the next book in this series."
--Mallory Anne-Marie Forbes, Mallory Heart Reviews