Dispatch #7: The Problem with Secrets (and Why My Fiction Isn’t as Fictional as It Appears)

If you spend enough time around government systems — military, policy, institutional machinery — you learn something most people don’t want to admit:

Secrets aren’t hidden because they’re extraordinary.
They’re hidden because they’re inconvenient.

That was probably one of the most disappointing insights of my adult life. Somewhere between deployment briefings, interagency turf wars, and the classic “you don’t need to know that,” it dawned on me that secrecy isn’t mystical — it’s practical.

We love to picture conspiracy as glamorous: shadowy masterminds, coordinated agendas, code names, elaborate plots.
Reality is far less cinematic.

It’s paperwork.
It’s liability avoidance.

It’s turf protection and plausible deniability.

It’s people making decisions they hope they never have to take responsibility for.

Once you understand that, the paranormal stops looking fantastical and starts looking administrative.

Which is a wry way of saying: I didn’t write No Rest for the Wicked because I believe ancient cults and cosmic artifacts are hiding under Nevada’s desert sands.
I wrote it because I’ve seen how power — actual power — hides behind bureaucracy, egos, accidental outcomes, and narratives written after the fact.

We have this cultural habit of assuming secrets are run by masterminds.
A hidden architect.
A cabal in a room where everyone understands the plan.

Anyone who has spent time inside a large institution knows how funny that idea is.

Most “grand schemes” are just mid-level decision makers trying to look competent while hoping no one traces the consequences back to them. Secrecy has far more in common with office politics than spy thrillers. If secrecy were a person, it wouldn’t be seductive — it would look exhausted.

Things get buried not because they are too extraordinary for public view, but because no one wants to deal with what happens when they surface.
Classified material isn’t always protecting truth — often it’s protecting someone’s career.

That’s the psychology of secrecy you learn up close: people protect themselves first, the mission second, and the truth somewhere further down the line.

And society insists on believing the opposite.
We prefer a narrative where power is intentional, cleanly executed, and held by someone who knows what they’re doing. The alternative — that institutions are often reactive, improvisational, and occasionally clueless — is too unsettling to sit with.

That’s where fiction steps in—not to replace reality, but to expose it.
You invent secret societies not because real ones don’t exist, but because the real ones would make for terrible drama.

So yes, my book has ancient families, covert organizations, and metaphysical stakes. But their behavior is patterned after the world I’ve actually seen:

The Davenports have influence, but it is constrained by vanity and the burden of their own myth.
Eidolon possesses intelligence networks, yet it is mired in internal politics and moral calculus.
Parallax isn’t a unified entity — it’s overlapping agendas held together by personality and ego.

That’s closer to truth than people want to acknowledge.
Real institutions don’t operate with orchestral precision.
They lurch.
They improvise.
They rewrite the narrative afterwards so it looks intentional.

The supernatural elements in my series don’t make the world extraordinary — they just magnify how ordinary power really behaves.

A relic that manipulates time isn’t that different from legislation that rewrites history.
A family determined to outlive mortality isn’t far removed from dynasties convinced they deserve continuation.
Secret societies in fiction are simply metaphors for what society refuses to articulate: power is often inherited, improvised, or stumbled into — not earned or deserved.

Here’s the funny part: when you cloak this in fiction, readers assume you’re embellishing.

They don’t realize the exaggeration is mostly aesthetic.

Our real world already runs on half-truths, withheld information, vanity, and the hope that no one examines the process too closely.
The supernatural just gives me a cleaner lens.

No Rest for the Wicked isn’t escapism — it’s amplification.
It takes the way institutions behave and turns up the contrast so people finally notice.

People cling to glamorous conspiracy myths because the truth is disappointing: no masterminds, no brilliance — just humans with access, insulation, and competing priorities.

Maybe that’s the trick I’m playing.
People think they’re stepping into a paranormal universe, but they’re really walking into a lightly dramatized reflection of their own.

If my book feels uncanny, it isn’t the relics doing it.
It’s the fact that the fiction isn’t as fictional as it looks.

— Kat