Meg Shannon spent her twenties trying to write the kind of books she thought she was supposed to write — light, bright, and easy. They were not good.

She grew up in South Boston, the youngest of five, in a family where everyone talked loudly and nobody backed down from anything. She studied criminal justice, worked briefly as a paralegal, and then spent several years in victim advocacy before burning out completely and needing, desperately, to do something else with her hands.

The first dark romance she wrote was not intended for publication. It was intended to get something out of her system. It didn’t work — she just wrote another one.

Meg writes morally complex men, women who don’t flinch, and stories that don’t apologize for going to difficult places. Nobody in her books gets redeemed, and she considers that honest.

She still lives in Boston, still talks too loudly, and considers long harbor walks a legitimate form of therapy.