I occasionally write children’s books, even though most of my work sits in adult fiction. They feel like two very different gears in the same machine. Adult genres tend to pull me into heavier themes—messier emotions, complicated people, consequences that don’t resolve neatly. It’s rewarding, but it can also get quite dense after a while.

Children’s writing does something else entirely. It forces me to step back from all of that and just tell the story in its purest form. No overthinking, no hiding behind layers. If it doesn’t land simply and clearly, it doesn’t work. That kind of restraint is actually quite hard, but I like that challenge. It keeps my writing honest.

There’s also a kind of freedom in it that I don’t really get anywhere else. You can lean into imagination without having to justify it, and you’re allowed to be direct about emotion in a way adult fiction sometimes resists. It’s a useful shift for me—not a departure from what I do, but a reset that keeps everything else from becoming too weighed down.

When writing chidren’s books I publish under my full name, Kylie Evans.