You might have read the title and thought I was being hyperbolic, but I promise you this is a true story.

Once upon a time I worked at one of the top 5 entertainment public relations firms both in the U.S. and globally. They came up in old Hollywood and after launching the careers of a few Hollywood legends, their reputation was solidified. I just knew in my twenty-something young brain I would work there, and I would be this high-powered Hollywood publicist one day. I knew everything about pop culture and was plugged in like nobody’s business when it came to celebrity. In my head, I was "that girl,” and no one could tell me different. After starting at a boutique PR firm that wasn’t actually what I wanted to do, but I viewed it as a foot in the door, I started to slowly ascend the entertainment ranks. Making friends all over to get those glowing recommendations I knew would come in handy one day when a spot would finally open up at my dream firm.

After having some truly awful bosses (some far too incompetent for their career level and some that were trying to be the second coming of Miranda Presley), I finally found my way to Rogers & Cowan. I truly achieved my dream of making it to the big leagues. I was working with A-list actors, musicians I admired, and some truly inspiring creatives spanning producing, writing, and content creation. Wow…there was just one problem. I forgot that I was a woman. Scratch that, a black woman working in corporate. Man, I was so naive.

Through the years, I worked really hard—no one could say I wasn’t damn good at my job—so when you view someone as blocking your goals, or as someone you don’t want to be friends with (or can’t use), what do you do? You throw them under that damn bus running 60MPH and walk away. I could literally see the light behind my eyes start to fade in photos. It would be many years until I got it back.

First, it was my boss. A boss I looked up to—who made my mental health deteriorate so badly that I developed hard lumps on my back that flared up anytime I was stressed. She pushed me to the point where I basically told HR I was going to sue. I’ll let you fill in the blanks of what could have happened here. For once, HR did the right thing and actually let her go. It sent ripples through the company. INSANE. Completely unheard of. Felt great in the moment, but in a way it cursed me.

I thought, wow, this is a fresh start. I can start over and prove my worth again—but this time, the right people would notice. That was my second mistake. My colleagues at the same level started to see me as competition. Before, they just pitied me and were generally nice because they knew my old boss was totally insane. But once I started jumping onto accounts that had been theirs, or getting chosen for opportunities over them, it became a real problem. I fell deeper and deeper into depression and could feel the career I dreamed of slipping through my fingers. I was living in a constant state of having to “cover my ass,” because blame that wasn’t even mine kept landing on me. It made me absolutely dread going to work.

Then another miracle happened.

My company merged with another PR powerhouse and became R&CPMK. I was placed under the supervision of a high-powered, highly respected publicist whom I loved. He was truly amazing—and his client list even more so. I got to work with incredible talent and learned an insane amount in a very short time. But even with all these new opportunities—I’m talking rooms filled with the most famous actors, directors, and agents in the business—I looked around one day and really noticed the life I had been dreaming of.

Everyone I spoke to was either divorced, never married, had no kids, had no real accomplishments outside of work (which wasn’t really their achievement, but their clients’ accomplishments), and was paid like shit. I’m talking Senior Vice Presidents still paid like shit. My world fully collapsed that day.

Did I really want this future for myself? Were my only options being married to my work and alone forever, or leaving the business entirely to have a life? That’s GRIM. What was I even working toward?

I remember one big-time publicist I knew casually mentioning she couldn’t afford a new car, so she just kept driving her shitty old one (I won’t name the exact car in case she ever stumbles upon this). So…you can’t afford a new car, can barely afford rent, have zero personal time to take care of yourself, and you’re married to the job? I guess the one constellation prize is that you can claim bragging rights by saying you work with so-and-so.

My “dream job” was starting to look more and more like a nightmare. Did I want to spend the rest of my years making other people’s dreams come true without realizing my own?

So where does Kate come in?

I worked on her team and one particular evening I accompanied her to the launch of her vodka brand. It was truly an amazing event. She even had pieces from her limited-edition capsule collection there and gifted me so much clothing—which I still own to this day (thank you so much)—including a beautiful, luxe faux fur coat that’s very Penny Lane meets New Jersey mob wife. I’ll wear it to the grave. Anyway, she had a tarot reader there who was also a psychic. I had to stay there anyway until Kate was ready to leave, so once my work was done, I sat down with this reader and she read me for filth. Not a single footnote missed. It’s been years, so I can’t remember her exact words, but I remember writing the bullet points down in my Notes app. More or less, she said I was going to go in a completely different direction, but that I was afraid to lose stability. She went in deep on that theme.

What I didn’t know at the time was that Kate overheard part of it.

As I was walking her to her car at the evening’s close, she poked a little. Well—a lot. She flat-out asked me what the tarot reader and I had talked about. Now, in most cases, you’re never suppose to be honest when a client asks you something like that because it will always come back around somehow and your ass will get lit on fire by your boss. I’ve learned that lesson too many times, so I hesitated. Lie or get lit on fire. Generally it would be an easy choice.

One thing about Miss Hudson is that she has a very welcoming aura, and she’s incredibly charming—even when she’s not trying to be. When she walks into a room, you can literally see and feel her aura’s glow. She has the kind of presence that pulls you into her gravitational field, and you don’t want to leave. I would’ve been happy being a little planet—or a dimly lit star—circling around her orbit for the rest of my career. I guess that’s what spiritually fulfilled people are like. They fill their well to the point of overflow, and everyone around them desperately clammers for a cup, or even a sip. And most of all, she’s sincere, which is not exactly par for the course in Hollywood.

I explained what the reader had said to me and in broader terms I alluded to something I thought about doing. Kate then asked me to be more specific. “What are you thinking of doing?” Gulp. Talk about a moment standing still. It could’ve been that aura I talked about or the fact I felt like I was halfway out the door anyway, but I decided to be fully honest. I told her what I really wanted to do with my life, but how it wasn’t possible right now because of personal obligations and savings. Blah blah blah. Excuses, excuses.

We stood at her car door and I opened it. She looked me in the eyes and stood with one heel on the curb, the other hovering before stepping fully into her car. She turned to me and said, “I haven’t known you very long, but one thing I can pick up on is that you’re a sweet soul—determined and very capable. Salt of this earth.”

At the time, I always wore this sun pendant around my neck. It was a protection symbol in the shape of the sun. Against my all-black outfit (as was custom for behind-the-scenes workers), I’m sure it stood out. She continued, “You see that symbol you wear? Do you know what it means?”

I said, “No…” quietly. Almost in a whisper, afraid of my voice.

“It’s your sun sign. Your masculine sign. If you feel like there’s something you need to do, then you should follow the energy of your sun sign. It will guide you in the right direction. Channel that masculine energy into yourself and follow your gut. I know you’ll make the right decision—but only you can know what that is.”

She said a little more, but I think I blacked out. Talk about a surreal moment. This incredible woman was standing in front of me, dishing out life advice in such a sweet motherly way. After several minutes we exchanged goodbyes, she got into her car, and her driver took her home.

I wrote down what she said after I got to my car so I wouldn’t forget it, but how could I? Over the next month, her words danced around in my head as I tried to figure out what to do, and I gave myself every excuse to stay put. I was too old to change careers, too comfortable (I mean, it was a pretty cushy job), and didn’t know what else I could even be good at. The list went on. After about a month of going through the motions, I ran into more workplace discomfort with my coworkers, who were truly awful to work with and constantly made me doubt myself. Then I had to cover one of the worst clients I’ve ever worked with, who gave me a not-so-gentle push off the edge of that cliff. And let me just say—her filmography is not impressive enough, nor is she “that pretty” in real life, to be that snooty and bitchy to people she clearly views as “the help,” but I digress. After that day, I said, “FUCK IT,” and put in my two weeks’ notice.

I had no real plan. No security. And then, at the end of my two-week notice, I officially left—and then COVID happened. WOW. Talk about universal timing.

I won’t bore you with everything that happened in between, but now I work as a freelancer, moved to Montana, and live like a witch in the woods while attempting to finish my debut novel. While I’m not as financially secure as I was with a steady 9-to-5, but I’m a lot happier. My physical and mental health has improved tremendously, and most importantly, I make my own schedule and have the flexibility to actually enjoy my life.

Once I was able to regulate my body and emotions again, I honed in on what I really wanted to do. I wanted to be an author. And… own a spiritual shop where I sell magic candles and spiritual bath kits—but one dream at a time.

In a weird way, I credit Kate Hudson with giving me the strength to stop being so goddamn scared and do the thing I actually wanted to do. Fear kept me stuck, but a little gentle advice from a genuine movie star gave me courage. That’s crazy. Who else can say that?

So if I ever do get an agent and a Big Five publishing deal, I hope to send her a copy and bring it all full circle. Not that she’d remember—she’s met so many different versions of me throughout her life—but I’ll always remember her kindness and honesty.

And that is everything.

Throughout the process of writing my first draft, I’m learning that the most important aspect of a story is your character’s ability to change. I was so focused on the external events happening to my protagonist that I didn’t dedicate enough effort to my character’s internal arc. This led to the big climax of my story falling flat. I keep trying to remind myself that the events happening in the story are just pressure points forcing my characters to become someone new or realize they can’t.

To give more context, my story is about a young couple who are separated by death in a gunfight. The woman goes to hell, where she strikes a deal with a Goddess to return to life in exchange for the souls of a thousand evil men, each possessed by Ratten—demonic soldiers of the Goddess of Destruction and Chaos. Desperate to reunite with her lover, she agrees to join the Goddess’s elite force of assassins to exorcize the souls of the possessed, help liberate humanity, and reunite with her one true love. As she embarks on this brutal mission, she begins to doubt the Goddess’s true intentions, and her quest for love may ultimately destroy her soul.

Sounds really awesome, right?

I had every chapter planned so meticulously until the third act, where the cracks began to show. Although my plot and premise were promising, why did I feel like the action fell flat? I had written myself into a hole and was stuck for months. I had to go back to basics to figure out what was not working. I basically scrapped the entire third act and plotted the final scene. It’s a perfect mirror image of the first chapter, so I know it’s strong. Now I had 10 chapters to fill to get to that point, but how?

I thought back to my recent five-star reads and how they ripped me to pieces, emotionally. A Forbidden Alchemy and Red City immediately come to mind. Those characters had deep-seated flaws that drove me crazy as a reader, but felt realistic and the most human. What do I mean by that? In A Forbidden Alchemy, Nina Harrow had a secret she was holding onto, so at times, I couldn’t understand why she would withhold information from her love interest, Patrick Colson. It drove me up a wall! She held everything so close to her chest, yes, because she had been alone, hurt, and guarded all of her life, but it was all to keep herself safe. She had become sneaky and secretive out of necessity, and when it’s ingrained in you like that, it’s hard to let go or change, even to your detriment. That’s an amazing human characteristic to assign to your protagonist. Through Nina, I learned that flaws should not just be a flaw to make your character seem “interesting.” The flaws could also serve as natural contradictions to their actual wants and needs. Character flaws should also cost you something. In Nina’s case, it cost her love, trust, and loyalty.

Wow, what a takeaway. So yeah, okay, my third act fell flat, but I’m viewing it as a good thing. Looking back, I can see now that my protagonist isn’t changing enough, and I didn’t give her enough of an opportunity to. Everything in the story is happening to her, not enough is happening within her. I’m viewing this as a glass-half-full moment because killing off 12 chapters means nothing in the long run if those chapters don’t serve their intended purpose. Better to catch these types of mistakes now versus later.

Here are some wisdom nuggets I’ve picked up through my rewrites. Save it, tweak it, and maybe it’ll prevent a sleepless night or two.

Make every choice your character makes cost them something, like time, trust, safety, or anything that matters. If it costs nothing, it means nothing.

A character’s greatest desire should always come with a cost. If your protagonist wants love, freedom, power, or redemption—make sure achieving it risks destroying something essential about them. Stakes aren’t just external; they’re emotional and moral too.

Write their flaws as survival mechanisms, not just a flaw. Give your character contradictions.

The best stories explore the tension between what a character wants and what they need. So my FMC is on a quest for love that may ultimately destroy her soul. Taking that into account, tragedy or triumph comes from whether or not she learns the difference in time.

Show who your characters are through how others misread them. No one is ever fully understood.

Each misreading tells us something about the character being judged, and about the person doing the judging. The misunderstanding itself becomes story fuel.

Your characters need to change by the end of their arc. It’s not about what happens to them, but what happens within them

The goal is to make sure your characters are changed (“because I knew you, I have been changed for good…” Okay, I’m sorry. I had to put a Wicked lyric in there). Start with your character’s needs, not the plot. The most powerful stories grow from what your character wants and fears, not from hitting structural beats. When you understand their emotional drive, every event naturally challenges who they are.

What are your best tips for improving character arcs? 👇🏽 Feel free to share with the class. I need all the help I can get during rewrites.

The past two weeks have been filled with endless discourse, ad nauseam, about three Harry Potter fanfics that have been traditionally published this year. Most recently, Alchemised by SenLinYu has been staring down the barrel of a gun, but apparently Russian roulette is my favorite form of self-immolation. Why not step into the crossfire?

The book itself states—“Alchemised is a work of dark fantasy containing wartime violence, religious abuse, depictions of complex trauma, suicidal ideation, self-harm, human experimentation, medical torture, eugenics, cannibalism, sexual assault, rape, and allusions to necrophilia. Please remember that depiction is not authorial endorsement.”

Yet the only thing I constantly see are people claiming this book glorifies rape culture and torture. I hate that we’ve gotten to a point where the omission of anything not explicitly stated is treated as an admission of guilt, instead of trusting subtext. While I disagree with the arguments that Alchemised glorifies rape, they truly have nothing to do with the actual conversation, which at its heart is about whether or not this book has a right to exist.

Since 2020, there has been an annoying trend where people in affected communities misdirect their justified anger towards people within their own communities, even weaponizing their identities to drive home a point. I find this disingenuous and tedious. In an unrelated discourse, I had someone tell me I’m not black enough (literally) because I read authors like Rebecca Ross, Carissa Brodbendt and Travis Baldree. Are we in grade school again? What’s your next insult going to be, calling me an Oreo? If anything being accused of not being “black enough” is the most black thing that can happen to you, but I digress. This type of weaponization only pushes away the people who might agree with you or are, at the very least, be willing to engage in conversation about how they might be in the wrong. I know it’s complicated since Rowling is still alive and actively causing harm, but it feels like we’re being held to an impossible standard of purity no one can meet.

Harry Potter is a global phenomenon that has made Rowling a billionaire three times over. If anything, we should boycott the companies that bankroll her — I’m looking at you HBO, HBO Max, Max, Max Plus Pro…whatever. My point is, HP is a huge franchise and anyone that is going to be drawn to the IP, if they aren’t already, will not be looking to SenLinYu (SLY) for the go-ahead.

SenLinYu has repeatedly shown us through her actions, her social media posts and interviews that she’s done everything possible to distance herself from the HP IP. Now I’ve heard the argument that if she truly wanted to distance herself, why didn’t she change her AO3 pen name? I can’t speak to why someone would or wouldn’t want to change the name they feel most comfortable with, but I guarantee you when she first got signed the publishers brought the possibility of changing her name up. I’m not going to speculate on the reasons why SLY decided to keep it, but in the grand scheme of things being internet “famous” on a fanfic website is not even the tiniest sprinkle in the global bucket.

Now, do I think that if you knew about SLY’s author origins you could divorce the knowledge of Alchemised being Harry Potter fan fiction from your mind? No.

Do I think that if you decided to read Alchemised not knowing its origins, but then someone told you it used to be Harry Potter fan fiction that you could divorce its origins from the current story? Possibly. Still, that’s still such a small percentage of people who would know that fact. A majority of readers who decide to pick up Alchemised will not know it was once a Harry Potter fanfic.

Do I think you can consume Alchemised and have the story stand on its own if you did not know its origins? Yes. Someone would have to deliberately go out of their way to tell you, but aren’t we supposed to be boycotting Rowling and not intentionally drawing attention to her? Personally, I thought she was persona non grata since 2019. So why are trying to connect SenLinYu, a biracial, non-binary, queer identifying person whose parents are immigrants who survived in actual concentration camps, to Rowling?

SenLinYu has clearly done the work to make Alchemised stand on its own. She even posted a stack of books that fueled her research for the magic system and history in the story. At the start of reading Alchemised, I found myself—subconsciously or intentionally—trying to connect the characters of Manacled to Alchemised. Roughly towards the end of part one, I realized I no longer cared because the story was truly its own, taking all of the parts that made it great in the first place and polishing off other parts that were reworked for the better. Its unfortunate this is what we’re deciding to talk about instead of the parallels of what’s happening in our current reality to the themes in the book.

Trust me, I understand the harm Rowling is actively and currently causing to the trans community. She uses her money to impact legislation and spew vitriol at these fragile communities online, which has real world ramifications people in these communities experience. It’s uncomfortable. It’s scary. I know, which is why I view supporting SLY as an act of resistance. It’s clear to me that SenLinYu has worked to distance the her story from HP. She publicly and loudly rejects Rowlings rhetoric and donates her money to pro-trans charities. How much more does she have to give to satisfy your blood lust? It really is a double-edged sword. Either she didn’t publish and has supposed “fans” of her work sell unauthorized print copies of her story for profit or she traditionally publishes and has an angry mob chase her for eternity with pitchforks and rope. She can’t win. Or maybe you simply don’t want her to.

While I am an occasional fanfic reader, I have never been in the HP fanfic space. Manacled was my first foray into that world. To my understanding, it’s become a safe place for HP lovers to commiserate their love for the story without engaging with She Who Must Not Be Named. It’s one of the reasons why Rowling hates HP fanfic it so much. That and the fact most HP fic writers are queer identifying and from marginalized groups. It’s a celebration of identity, freedom of expression. It keeps the love of the story alive and best of all it gives Rowling nothing. In the case of Alchemised, outside of the correlation of the main characters being rivals on opposite sides of the proverbial good vs evil tropes or having a few run of the mill character archetypes found in almost every fantasy book, I don’t see how Kaine and Helena are Draco and Hermione coded. Just because someone loves books and is really smart doesn’t mean they’re the same.

The other argument I’ve seen is that Alchemised is being pushed heavily as a HP fic and Dramione love story in the press, so SLY is not actively distancing herself like she claims. Alright, here’s where I’m gonna push back a little. If anyone can show me real marketing assets, from the publisher or SLY herself, that presents the book this way, my inbox is open. However, I get why people might be confused.

To the average consumer, you see a profile piece on SLY in The Guardian and think its being deliberately promoted that way. Coming from a public relations and marketing background, I know that editorially you have no control over what a journalist, their editor or the publication as a whole wants to do with your story. It’s the deal you make when an interview is secured. If what the journalist has written is not factually incorrect there is nothing you can do. Any journalist who is competent at their job will investigate everything about their subject and include it in their overall editorial, regardless if the subject brings it up as a selling point or not. I myself have given journalists talking points on a client and outlined topics that are off-limits only to have those very same off-limit talking points brought up in conversation later. A phone interview is easier to correct in the moment by gently interjecting and telling the interviewer to move on from a question. However, if its a podcast, on-camera interview or in front of an audience it’s harder to circumvent. Sure, I can ask the journalist to remove certain questions or anything surrounding the unwanted topic by calling and asking nicely, but then their editor can tell me to “fuck off” and run it anyways. Sometimes you can do everything right and still get screwed over, but we do the best we can with what we’re given in sometimes impossible situations.

I’m not going to punish a new author because a publication wants to write attention grabbing headlines with HP imagery for clicks, likes and shares. I can almost guarantee you they were giving preferred press assets the publishers wanted everyone to use, but the publication decided to use photos of Emma Watson anyways because Emma’s face is famous and gets clicks. SLY’s face does not. And as we all know, people barely read headlines as it is, so catchy attention grabbing photos will have to do. I’m not saying it doesn’t perpetuate harm, in this case harm to the SLY’s legacy and the trans community, but given the impossible situation we do the best that we can.

I read fanspiraling’s article on fandom and I want to share this here —

“Fandom draws power away from the canon center, through the transformation part of transformative works. The fan writer doesn’t create canon: they’re taking that canon work and reshaping it into a fic, a meta, a character study. If enough fandom readers appreciate that fic or meta or character study and share it, add to it, or rework it in new stories, canon starts to slip, or even vanish.”

At the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves how much of this ends up being virtue signaling and how much of this actually advances trans rights? Alchemised is so far removed from Rowling and her anti-trans rhetoric. SenLinYu is not directly or outwardly supporting Rowling or her views. In fact, there has been evidence of the contrary. So, do you actually want to be community and educate people with opposing views as you or do you just want to be right?

If you don’t want to purchase the book with your own money because of your beliefs there are ways to ethically consume it. You can check Alchemised out from your local library, get it from a second-hand store or borrow from a friend. There are ways around it, but to have this strict black-or-white thinking whilst ignoring the nuance in the middle is going to isolate and alienate the very people you’re trying to educate. Personally, I believe supporting SLY instead of Rowling is a great way to uplift a talented new author and give a big middle finger to a bigot I used to idolize.

But you can decide that for yourself. You don’t need the internet to validate if you’re a good person or not because of the type of books you read. Only you can decide where you draw the line.