If you’ve been following The Lotus Mark series, you know it’s never shied away from the dark corners of the human experience—addiction, trauma, psychosis, and survival. But The Green Lotus? This one cuts deeper.

This is the hardest book I’ve written so far.

Not because the words won’t come. They do, sometimes in floods. But because The Green Lotus forces me to sit with a kind of pain that’s all too real: the slow burn of alcoholism, the crushing cycle of domestic abuse, the grief of watching someone self-destruct—and the helplessness that shadows it all.

This isn’t about zombies or fantasy monsters. It’s about real monsters: the kind that wear a charming smile, pour another drink, and keep people shackled in silence.

In The Green Lotus will be centered around alcoholism, I’m telling little Lily’s story; The young girl trapped by Javier in the Pink Lotus. She's now 18, trapped, abused, addicted. And I’m telling Dayna’s, too; older, wiser, trying to save someone else the way she once needed saving. There are moments in this book where I need to step away from the keyboard, not because I didn’t know what to write, but because I knew exactly what to write.

This story is fiction, yes. But it’s also a mirror. For too many people, Lily’s story isn’t fiction at all.

I’m writing this book to show the horrors—but also the hope. To remind readers that recovery is possible, that compassion matters, and that the small good we do in a broken world still counts.

If you’ve read The Pink Lotus or The Blue Lotus, you know I don’t offer easy answers. The Green Lotus will be no different. But it will be honest. And, I hope, healing.

Thank you for being here. For reading. For caring.

Deanna LaForce, RN