Whether as D. A. Holley or Holden Cummings, when I set out to build a world, it is always centered around the landscape of the mind. Questions of identity (Who gets to decide who we are? Who do we become under pressure? When faced with impossible choices? Is identity even fixed?) bubble up in every one of my works. Whether you're reading about a pheromone driven social hierarchy in The Hive Omnibus, or a religious institution that powers its healings by exploiting gay intimacy, you'll find these questions explored in queer fiction works by Holden Cummings. Be it that you're sinking your teeth into a Freudian spin on supers that interrogates whether you'll ever be satisfied with power, or stumbling through the visceral mindscapes in The Black Rain Chronicles, where memory is weaponized, and trauma is central to the experiences of the Whiteheart children, you'll find questions of identity permeate the work. 

And then there's the Luckborn Series, which brings in the complexity of an ensemble cast, a world that is alive and possesses a will, or many wills...where gods and spirits provide a backdrop through which we ask what we are willing to sacrifice for the wellbeing of others, and who we become when a stranger extends a helping hand to us. 

You'll see themes of identity in crisis throughout all of my works, something that stems from a question I was asked by a therapist when I was eighteen and coming out of the closet. The question was deceptively simple. The hardest questions to answer often are. It was: "who are you?" 

She gave me a week to answer. I've spent more than ten years building worlds and writing stories surrounding that central premise, the questions that spin off from it. Three words with the power to alter how we think about ourselves, a simple enough inquiry. Who are we? 

As you read my works, you'll find yourself confronted with difficult subject matter constantly, but that's the nature of dark fantasy when it's doing its job well. You'll interrogate how selfhood is formed and how it is expressed under pressure in character driven narratives set in secondary worlds and alternate universes, become embroiled in plots and schemes with world altering stakes, and linger in quiet moments both disturbing and intimate, as you follow those characters through journeys of self-actualization.