A protagonist flaw is what creates tension, drives character growth, and makes a story worth reading. Without one, even a capable protagonist can feel predictable—this is the core issue behind the hyper-competent protagonist.
If you’re looking for story setting ideas, you’re not alone. Setting is one of the most common places writers get stuck—not because they lack imagination, but because the options feel endless.
Celina is a Brazilian writer who crossed the ocean to complete a master’s in social sciences and now lives in London with her cat Trufa. She works in marketing and spends her free time exploring London’s weird corners, the little bookshops, secret queer spaces, and drag events that make you rethink your entire existence.
Heather Jefferson graduated Phi Beta Kappa in English Literature from University of Illinois. She is a wife, mother, yoga teacher, and manager of a wellness center. Daughter Unbound is her first book. Heather lives in Columbia, Maryland, with her husband, Bob, and their two dogs and two cats.
I write dark fantasy romance with teeth – stories where monsters are messy, love is complicated, and the woods are always watching. My debut novel, Lupines Bloom Where Blood Falls, is the first instalment of The Florilegium Cycle, set in the strange town of Lorewood, where the line between human and other is thinner than it should be.
I am retired from the U.S. Air Force. Following retirement, I taught for Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University at their satellite campuses in Charleston SC, and Jacksonville FL. I also volunteered with literacy programs, teaching and tutoring adult reading and English as a Second Language (ESL) classes.
I was born in 1956, and am Dad to two grown up children, and Granddad to two little grandsons.
I am a retired software architect living in Mexico. My passions include reading, writing, and composing music.
Rita Jo Norvoteny is a dark fiction author and creator of The Reformed Killers Universe, a series that blends psychological horror, dark humor, and morally complex characters. Her work explores themes of trauma, survival, and the uneasy line between redemption and destruction.
After years of writing for the worlds of science and tech, Helen has traded white papers for world-building to pursue her lifelong love of YA fantasy. A devotee of literary escapism since childhood, she writes with the hope of giving a voice to all those who need to see themselves on the page.
Bryan Sanders writes quiet, atmospheric fiction that treats emotion as a physical force. His work is rooted in restraint rather than spectacle, allowing mood, sensation, and implication to carry narrative weight. He favors intimate interiors, institutional settings, and moments of charged stillness where characters experience recognition before understanding.
Born and raised in the Magic Valley of Southern Idaho, Dakota Frandsen has been a published author since the age of sixteen and is a seasoned paranormal investigator, often dubbed the ‘Specialist of the Strange,’ whose work transcends traditional ghost hunting by delving deeply into the human psyche and the harsh truths of life few dare to admit.
Born into the mountains of Southwest Virginia and spending early childhood with a family of artists, Sandra Baldwin’s Appalachian childhood and travels have given her a unique American perspective. Though she resided in Virginia, New York, North Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Kentucky, and finally Delaware, her notoriously ‘itchy feet’ have taken her through forty-seven states.
Skye Gent is a UK children’s author whose writing is rooted in one simple belief – that no child should feel alone while they’re growing up. Before becoming an author, she trained and worked as a nurse, where she saw first-hand how deeply emotional experiences shape the way we understand ourselves. That perspective stayed with her, but it was her own lived experiences – of confusion, change, and not always having the right words or support at the right time – that ultimately led her to writing.
I hold an MA in global studies, with a focus on peace and security in Africa, from the Institute for Peace and Security Studies and Leipzig University, as well as a bachelor’s degree in political science and international relations from the University of Roma Tre. For almost ten years, I have worked as a project manager and country representative for non-governmental organizations. Right now, I live in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
I’m a much-published scholar of translation, literature, rhetoric, and semiotics (forty books, one hundred and twenty articles) who has always wanted to be a published novelist – and now my fourth published novel is out!
Born in the back room of a Wisconsin tenant farm, went to a one-room grade school, and rode a bus fifty-two miles to high school. A peacetime army veteran who discovered theatre and my wife-to-be the same week my college football career ended. Began writing fiction only after my college teaching career ended with five awards, a Fulbright lectureship in Poland, and acting in seven foreign countries.
Whitney Healy specializes in poetry, creative nonfiction, memoir, and fantasy. In 2025, Whitney’s small poetry series, Blackberry Winter: Songs of the Appalachian Trails, received first place in Appalachian Literature with West Virginia Writers, Inc. A lover of hot tea, watching her son at first base, and Stranger Things, Evermyst: The Awakening will be Whitney’s debut novel.
D.K. Dillenback is an American author and military strategist who explores the intersection between the human condition and our perceived reality. His writing attempts to capture reason, order, and peace from an infinite web of complex adaptive systems.
Originally from the east, I lived in a hundred-year-old log cabin in the Colorado foothills while I attended CU Boulder, earning a degree in Natural Resource Conservation. Upon graduation, I turned down a state job to work in game management and agriculture in East Africa, after which I went to horseshoeing school in Texas to become a farrier.