The Biggest Surprise I’ve Learned As My Writing Has Evolved

By Paige Ellery

I thought I had two separate writing identities. 

One for picture books. One for thriller novels. 

The picture book identity was soft, careful, playful. It wrote about a lion who just wanted a friend. It wrote letters to a baby girl documenting her first words and the way she belly-laughed at “gurllll” said in exactly the right voice. It wrote about a pirate captain named Captain Tootie in search of fruity booty. 

The writing identity that wrote upmarket fiction with thriller elements was someone else entirely. Harder. Quieter. The kind of quiet that knows too much about what people look like right before they decide to lie to you. The kind of quiet that knows something is wrong in the room, and that someone isn’t supposed to be trusted.

For a long time, I kept space in my head for both identities and told myself that was fine. That’s just how it worked. I would create different pen names and have two different identities.

But then, I saw some manuscript wishlists where a few agents said they were interested in horror/scary picture books. I thought it was weird. Odd. Kind of messed up. What kind of person writes horror picture books? But I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. It was stuck. 

Turns out… I do. I’m the person who does exactly that. 

In a matter of 3 weeks, I wrote a story about a child with a cat named Pip, a mystery and a monster who communicated through a cat flap using objects tied with red ribbons. A boy whose shadow moved at night when he thought it was sleeping, in order to protect him from something sinister. A bayou that loses its identity. A girl named Portabella who attracts broken things and people.

And that’s when I was surprised. I didn’t have two separate writing identities.

 Just one. 

It was all one living in one space. 

One scary, terrifying place. 

One that I’m still struggling to accept. 

I don’t know that I want to write about creepy things, about people you can’t trust, about the moment that very trust turns into a trap, because someone or something is always waiting to hurt you. 

I’ve spent years in a classroom with kids who had been let down by the people who were supposed to keep them safe, whether it was a parent, a teacher, or someone else close to them. 

I learned to read faces, and not just the obvious stuff, but the micro-expressions that flash before the mask comes back up. The flinch before the smile. The way a kid’s shoulders drop when they don’t think you’re watching anymore. 

If you think I learned this from my job, I didn’t. I learned it much earlier than that. Because I was one of those kids. The one who was consistently let down by the people I was supposed to trust and believe would keep me safe.

And when I sat down to write a thriller about a woman whose attacker walked free — when I started thinking about what it means to trust something and be wrong — I realized the picture books had always been about the same thing.

A child who trusts a cat to bring her gifts. A creature in the woods who knows exactly what to offer, and when, and how.

A teddy bear you love so much you’d hand him through a dark hole in the door to save someone you love more.

That’s not a cozy story. That’s a story about what happens when the thing you counted on becomes the thing you should have feared. When the warmth you leaned into was the danger itself.

The biggest surprise in learning to write what I write wasn’t a craft lesson. Not pacing or structure or how to build tension in 28 pages without losing a four-year-old.

It was this: I don’t write two things. I write one thing.

I write about the moment trust turns into a trap.

I don’t know what to do with that information except keep writing. Keep pulling the thread. Keep seeing where it goes.

So that’s what I’m doing.