Steven LaChance Blog

I don’t think I’ve ever said this out loud before.

People ask where my writing comes from, and for a long time I’ve given the easy answer. Life. Experience. The cases. The places I’ve been. All of that is true, but it’s not where it started.

I was writing long before the paranormal ever entered my life, and the truth is my voice was shaped by people who were not trying to scare anyone. They were trying to tell the truth, even when it was uncomfortable, even when it would have been easier to soften it.

Two of the people who shaped me the most were poets.

Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath taught me not to look away from what people carry inside themselves. There is a kind of honesty in their work that doesn’t ask permission and doesn’t apologize. It just sits there and lets you decide what to do with it. They could direct their thoughts and feelings with the precision of a surgeon working in words.

Truman Capote showed me how to sit with something difficult without turning it into spectacle. You can tell a hard story and still respect the people inside it. You don’t have to raise your voice to be heard. He was a master of description, using it to reveal the realities of life.

F. Scott Fitzgerald taught me to step back and look at what something meant after it was over. Not just what happened, but what stayed with you. That quiet reflection has always been part of how I see the world, and he understood his characters and the complexity of their lives.

The playwrights, Tom Stoppard and Edward Albee, taught me something different. They were masters of the emotional impact of the spoken word, and Albee understood better than most the violence words can carry.

And then there’s Carrie Fisher.

If one voice shows up more than any other, it’s probably hers. She showed me what a modern voice could sound like. Honest without being heavy handed. Personal without turning inward too far. Willing to say the thing out loud and then keep moving. There’s humor there, but it isn’t decoration. It’s how you stay yourself while telling the truth. She never flinched in saying the difficult things. She had a bravery I strive for but have never quite been able to reach. I’m getting closer as my written voice grows stronger. Carrie is on my shoulder when I write more than anyone else. She understands the dysfunction of it all.

It’s interesting. None of them wrote horror or the paranormal. I never imagined I would either.

But they taught me how to understand human relationships and emotion.

I have never written from a paranormal place. I write from my experience, from how I moved through moments that included the paranormal. By then I was ready to share it as a writer, because I had been taught by some of the best.