Lights Out
Lights Out
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Navessa Allen on Lights Out
In them own words: quotes and insights from the author.Why they wrote it
The storyteller who outlasted every other careerLong before Allen wrote fiction professionally, they moved through an almost implausible sequence of jobs: military service, aeronautical engineering, building flight simulators for jet aircraft, bartending in the Caribbean, farming in rural New England, running a small business in Maryland. Writing ran as a constant underneath all of it, and at some point the contrast became impossible to ignore.
I’ve been writing ever since – while bartending in the Caribbean, serving in the military, building flight simulators for jet aircraft, farming in rural New England, and running a small business in Maryland. While I’ve enjoyed a lot of the work I’ve been paid to do, nothing has ever fulfilled me like writing.
The appetite for storytelling did not begin with ambition. Allen grew up the youngest of five children near a mountain forest, frequently left behind when older siblings went exploring. The gap between what they could not do and what they could imagine became the engine.
I longed to go with them, so I sat and played with my dolls and acted out all the adventures we would go on when I was old enough. Sadly, once I was allowed to follow after them, our real-life escapades contained zero fairies and hardly any magic, and since I was now old enough to write, I turned to pen and paper to rectify that.
That move from disappointment to invention, from the forest that held no fairies to the page that could hold anything, is as close as the available sources get to explaining why Allen keeps writing at all.
How they wrote it
Finishing in private before the world could seeThe blog post title alone tells a story: “How I Published Three Books in Six Months.” The method Allen credits is deliberately unglamorous, a productivity tool built for distraction-prone work sessions rather than inspiration-dependent ones.
the pomodoro technique and checklists. I swear it’s less boring than it sounds.
Before the Into Darkness series, Allen had been posting draft chapters publicly while still writing them. A combination of health problems, including a celiac diagnosis, chronic gastritis, and anxiety that had climbed to a point where leaving the house felt impossible, forced a rethinking of how that public-draft model was actually working.
I’ve always had anxiety, and it’s been at an all-time high for months now. Like, I couldn’t bring myself to leave our new house high.
The practical change that followed the health reckoning was a full reversal of the public-draft model. Finishing before sharing meant the work could no longer be held hostage to the gap between where Allen was in the draft and where readers expected the story to go.
I’m going to write and finish books in the background. Only when a book is done will I start posting chapters.
That shift also had a harder edge to it. Releasing only finished work gave Allen control that posting live drafts had taken away, including some protection against early piracy of unfinished material.
Piracy had already cost Allen before the Into Darkness series reached readers. The decision to delay public release until a book was complete carried a specific grievance behind it, stated without softening.
I’ve had too many of them already show up on pirate sites, and if someone is going to steal from me, they’re going to pay to do it, damn it.
The personal thread
The writer who was always left behindAllen does not frame their origin story as triumph over hardship. The younger sibling left at the forest’s edge, playing alone with dolls, is where they locate the source of everything that came after. The word they reach for is not perseverance but necessity.
I was born a storyteller.
The author page on Allen’s own website lists the careers not as color or biography but as context for a single conclusion. The list is long and deliberately varied, and it exists to make one point land harder.
I’ve been writing ever since – while bartending in the Caribbean, serving in the military, building flight simulators for jet aircraft, farming in rural New England, and running a small business in Maryland. While I’ve enjoyed a lot of the work I’ve been paid to do, nothing has ever fulfilled me like writing.
What they want us to sit with
Dark romance that won’t let you label it cleanlyAllen’s own description of Lights Out resists the either/or sorting that genre readers often expect. The book’s page on Allen’s website places two apparently opposite registers side by side without explanation or apology, and that framing appears in Allen’s own marketing copy rather than in a reviewer’s shorthand.
Lights Out is a fast-paced dark romance with a morally gray male lead. Some themes and scenes may be disturbing to readers. Please check the TWs at the beginning of the book.
The content warning is not a disclaimer added by a publisher. Allen put it there, which means the expectation of disturbance is built into what they intended the book to be, not a side effect they are apologizing for.