I have always been more interested in the things people cannot quite explain.

The stories we tell ourselves. The convictions we mistake for truths. The small, seemingly inconsequential decisions that lead us somewhere we never intended to go. The curious distance between who we believe ourselves to be and who we become when it matters.

These are the things I write about.

I’m Aria Wild Bell, a writer drawn to the stranger corners of human nature, the beauty of imperfect things, and the peculiar possibilities hiding just beneath the surface of the ordinary.

I write fiction about people, their secrets, and the stories they tell themselves to make sense of the world. My current novel-in-progress, Smoke & Riots, explores the uneasy territory where truth, power, belief, and collective fear collide.

But the writing rarely begins with a novel.

It begins with a questions I can’t leave alone. An observation scribbled in the margins. A passing conversation that reveals more than its participants intended. A character who makes a terrible decisions for reasons that, against my better judgment, I understand.

So I keep journals.

Some contain fragments of stories. Others contain questions, curiosities, half-formed philosophies, and the occasional opinion I probably ought to have kept to myself. Follow a thought far enough and you might find yourself somewhere unexpected: inside a fictional world, among the peculiarities of human behavior, or contemplating why a perfectly ordinary object would be considerably more interesting with a secret compartment.

I have a fondness for old books, botanical oddities, miniature worlds, beautiful things with questionable histories, and ideas that refuse to behave themselves.

I don’t believe everything needs to be useful. I don’t believe every question needs a tidy answer. And I have never understood the appeal of being entirely sensible.

This little corner of the internet is where those interests meet. A writer’s notebook, an archive of curiosities, and a collection of doors into worlds both imagined and otherwise.

You’re welcome to wander.

Just be warned: curiosity has a habit of getting people into trouble.

Fortunately, I have always considered that a reasonable place to begin.

• A.W. Bell