How It Started

The Idea for The Department of Dark Errands

Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash

It began, as the best ideas do, in the wilds of the Internet.

January 2024. KaeJae had posted a story on Substack about her friend’s creative revenge—the sort that involves birdseed, a Tesla, and the kind of patience found only in women who have had enough. Her friend joked that what was needed in instances like that was a discreet agency for poetic justice.

Not assassins. Not hitmen.

Just a company that specialized in non-deadly, anonymous “dark errands”.

A covert team of magical fixers: bizarro Amélies targeting, sabotaging, hexing, and pranking only jerkwads.

Marketing their services on Telegram and Dark Web chickenshits.

She’d thrown in a James Bond reference (M, Q, and alllll the double oh’s) and PLOT TWIST: AyDee is a huge James Bond fan, so anything that smacks of her favorite man will catch her attention. Every time.

KaeJae posed the question, “Wouldn’t you SO love to work for The Department of Dark Errands?”

Fuck. Yes.

Cue AyDee’s immediate, caps-locked reaction:

“CAN SOMEONE PLEASE GAWD WRITE THIS SERIES??!!!”

Fast-forward fourteen months and KaeJae contacted AyDee and said, “Hey do you want to co-write this with me? I already have the pen name, the draft cover, and Simon & Schuster is going to be our distributor.”

AyDee remembered that 7th grader who was bit by the Writing Bug, who wrote a couple of YA novels, and whose dream was to be a published author.

And she thought, “When would I ever get the opportunity to do this, in my lifetime, at my age?”

So, she jumped in with typical Gemini impetuousness.

This is AyDee’s first foray into writing romantasy (KaeJae’s, too) as well as co-writing and, not gonna lie, she’s nervous as fuck. Imposter Bitch

Vesper. Smirky bitch!

is fluffing her ‘fro, hissing, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Which, yeah, ok, Vesper, understandable.

Because what AyDee KNOWS? Is contemporary. She’s been reading that since she was a freshman in high school and it’s never waned. She was addicted to the Loveswept line and it just snowballed from there. When she discovered short stories 5 years ago while in quarantine with her parents during COVID, she knew that’s what she wanted to try and write when she picked up the pencil again.

What AyDee’s FAMILIAR with? Is paranormal. She cut her teeth on shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel back in the day. Not to mention Forever Knight, Moonlight, Trueblood… and watching 15 years’ worth of Supernatural (#TeamSamWinchester) has to count for SOMETHING, right? Did she mention that J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood and Shelley Laurenston’s Magnus Pack, Pride Stories, and Call of Crows series will always be her favorite paranormal series? She has a thing for shapeshifters and vampires.

So. There’s history. But she knows there’s going to be a learning curve and she’s doing this with her best Knives Out impression over here.

This journey will definitely be interesting.

---

Midlife badass incoming on 5/12/26. Available for pre-order now!

---