Dark Fantasy: We Must Travel Through the Dark to Find the Light

I won 1st and 3rd Place in the unpublished Horror short story category at the Quills Writing Conference!

What's better than a weekend of writing? Writing with friends! The 2026 Quills Conference hosted by the League of Utah Writers was a blast.

My favorite activities: dinner with members of the Blue Quill chapter and making some dark fantasy buttons.

They didn't have any dark fantasy buttons, so I made my own.

My favorite sessions:

• Author Branding: Building a Brand Readers Trust by Bernadette Marie Soehner (author and founder/CEO of 5 Prince Publishing)

• Writing Faith in Fiction with Depth and Respect by David Rodeback (author and the League's 2025 Writer of the Year)

• The Author-Editor Relationship: Two Sides of the Same Coin by Sarah Bailey (editor) and Emily Gurney (author)

I learned that the most important aspect to author branding is your storytelling and your voice. A website, logo, cover art, etc... should enhance that brand. Also, having a good relationship with your editor or publisher or agent is key; no one else besides you will spend more time with your manuscript, so find someone willing to be your cheerleader! And my favorite, if you want to include faith in your story, remember the story needs to be about more than that (otherwise it'll sound like a sermon). In order to show readers light, we must include darkness and be honest about it. If we're honest about the darkness, maybe readers will believe us about the light. While I only have a smattering of faith in my current work-in-progress, Monster Soul, this is exactly what I hope to do with my own writing in dark fantasy: find the light!

For example, my most recent publication in the League's 2026 anthology, Humanity Through a Lens, has themes of healing and forgiveness from sexual abuse--an unfortunately common situation that a lot of people would rather not talk about. To be honest, I don't particularly like talking about it, either, but sometimes we must travel through the dark in order to find the light.

I got my physical copy of Humanity Through a Lens. It contains my fantasy short story "Magic Can't Heal Everything," my second published story.

Thanks for reading :) For more updates on my writing, sign up for my newsletter at the bottom of the page! You're also welcome to request either of the horror short stories that won prizes this year if you're curious. Until I get them published, I don't mind sharing them.