We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dakota Rayne a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Dakota, appreciate you joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Mission: Give voice previously-excluded authors and creators and highlight works that expose the depths of our humanity and its imperfections.

I think no matter how you go into one of these things, you’re always asked “Why.” Why you did you start, why do you continue, why do you keep going. I’ve been asked “Why Inked in Gray” many times, and I’ve always given the same answer, “because I just couldn’t”. I mean, how could someone witness the undeserved hardship and struggle our marginalized communities and friends have, and *not* do anything? In those interviews, I’d elaborate on my time as a social worker, working with others trying desperately to overcome the the social injustices and the systemic issues they faced simply because of their culture, race, ethnicity, disability, etc.

I’ve written paragraph after paragraph, told story after story about why I created Inked in Gray. They were all variations of the same truth — I couldn’t sit back and watch disadvantaged and marginalized individuals continue to be silenced by the majority. But there was always an underlying personal reason. I’ve come to terms with many aspects of it, but honestly, trauma never really goes away. It just stings less as the years go on.

The story behind why I started Inked in Gray goes back many years. This is a story about how one moment changed the course of so many lives.

Sometime in 1961, my grandfather died by suicide. I’m told he was on leave between tours in Southeast Asia. Special Forces. Had served over a dozen years in the military.

His death was tragic. It changed a family, a community, and the small world they lived in.

I could talk a little bit about the dissenting feelings about wartimes in Southeast Asia between the Korean war and the Vietnam war. But I’m not going to. You can google it. It’s not pretty.

My grandmother Nonni grieved the sudden death of her husband that day and for many years afterwards. Even when I came into this world, she always looked as if she was missing a part of her soul. As wise a woman she was, she could never really tell me how to heal. I think we are all still trying to figure that out.

One day Nonni was a military wife. The next she was a single mother with five kids, aged 9 months (my father) to 16 years of age. The ones that could work and make extra money did. But it wasn’t enough.

Tensions grew tight. Grief and desperation can make bad decisions feel like only options. Many were made in attempt to keep food on the table, care for a sick parent, keep a home. Yet despite all the ways they strived to make ends meet, they couldn’t. Nonni lost her house and with it the last shred of connection to her husband and the life they used to have. And back then, the military gave no benefits or resources to the spouses of military soldiers who died by suicide. They moved into Section 8 housing.

My dad learned to drive at 12 so he could do extra jobs on friends’ farms. Soon he was picking up his older brother every time he tried to drown his father’s last moments from his mind. I can relate. Friend or stranger, one’s last moments should be their own, but that is a post for another day.

Their bad choices came back to haunt them. Trouble arrived at their doorstep.

Again, and again, and again.

Our lives were filled with tragedy, trauma, and pain. Much of which I don’t remember. But no body cares about a grieving family. They only care about the trouble and inconveniences they’re causing to whatever precious balance this world is supposed to have. We see it everyday. Our society would rather arrest people for stealing food, throw them in jail then give them the resources they need to be independent. Because we all know those resources are more than just food – it’s education, healthcare, housing, employment. And you can’t just throw money at the problem. You have to have empathy, do the work, be forgiving, meet the person where they’re at, oh and listen, the most important part . . . In short, Social work at a national, community, and personal level.

Anyway, I’m lucky to be alive. Soon the trouble stopped knocking on our door. But just because you stop inviting it over, doesn’t mean it never stops by uninvited. It’s kinda like that homophobic relative that keeps showing up uninvited at holiday dinners, but everyone secretly wishes they would stay home.

Trust me, the plague always spreads before it fizzles out. Just like the consequences of bad decisions.

But we survived. All of us.

Shattered. Changed.

Confused. Angry.

Through it all, not a day goes by when those five kids and their mother missed their beloved person. Never a day went by where they didn’t wish he was here to be the husband and father he wanted to be, but thought he couldn’t.

We survived in his shadow.

To this day, I struggle with accepting everything that happened. We all do. I think the ones left still struggle with how everything ended up so far from where we intended. Our plight, like that of so many others, had fallen between the cracks of a society that had no safety net for its soldiers. Everything spiraled into dysfunction and chaos, which then created a generation raised with trauma, violence, and abuse as normal. A generation who then passed on their flaws to the next generation. My generation. Before we knew it, we’d created a cycle of domestic violence, abuse, and co-dependency.

But this is for him. For the grandfather I never had. For the community who thought Nonni’s kids were scum when they really just never learned how to stop their own pain. For my older brother, who by rights shouldn’t be here either. But we are. By the grace of the moon, we got lucky. For all the struggle we went through trying to survive in a world that didn’t give a f*ck about us.

We did it. Shattered, beaten, one foot in the mud.

Fueled by my anger and frustration with the way the world treated its vulnerable communities, I grew up and became a social worker. I worked with transient, gang-affiliated, and displaced youth. These individuals had few, if any, options for help. And I realized that was intentional. Today’s society is not built for everyone. It’s built to keep people struggling. The things that I saw, and the stories that I heard broke my heart. No story was the same, yet they all had one thing in common: their struggles were misrepresented.

What we see in the media is an incomplete picture of the world around us. It furthers distorts stereotypes, promotes prejudice, and builds barriers between communities. Those stereotypes create hate, dissolve empathy, and further those divides. They’re not helping us any, those divides are destroying us.

My grandmother didn’t get the help she needed. Nobody saw them for what they were. This contrasted so much with stories from the other side of my family — grandparents and relatives fleeing Nazi-occupied Poland. They built a whole community here in America that protected and helped each other as much as they could.

There was a power in that community. They funded passages to freedom, helped find jobs, safety, housing. I saw first hand the difference between the two communities.

I learned how safe spaces save lives. And they all start with the notion that we see each other for what we are: human. Imperfect, complicated, and authentic.

Words have the power to illicit change. They are outlets for us to express ourselves. Words give us refuge.

Words also build communities, dissolve stereotypes, and promote empathy and understanding. That’s the magic of storytelling. With Inked, I wanted to take my desire for change and give it life through opportunity. To give a voice to the misrepresented and provide stories that don’t just entertain, but also promote change and understanding. Voices should not be unheard because they are not what we expect.

They say everyone is fighting a different battle, day in and day out. We sometimes think we know what that battle is. But I don’t think we ever really know the depths of what our friends are dealing with. Those aren’t our shoes. We’re never going to be able to slip our feet into them, save for just a moment.

With Inked in Gray I want to show you, with each story, another pair of shoes. Take you through a story like mine, show you another aspect of our world. Another layer, another family that survived. And also those that didn’t. Because not all of us survive long enough to complete our dreams. Because maybe the world would be a little kinder if we thought more about what it felt to live in shoes unlike our own. Maybe we could change things if we had more insight. Change can’t start without a connection, and the more we reach out and take the hand of someone we don’t understand, the closer we become to making powerful change in this world.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

We founded Inked in Gray in 2019, right before COVID with our first anthology, The First Stain. After our second anthology, What Remains, we transitioned from hosting our own anthologies to partnering with the nonprofit WriteHive. This November marks the release of our second anthology, Reclaiming Joy, by WriteHive community authors.

Our mission is to give a voice previously-excluded authors and our partnership with WriteHive has allowed us to continue to bring multiple authors together under united themes. Reclaiming Joy is an uplifting collection of science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories focused on regaining a sense of happiness after tragedy, loss, and traumatic experiences.

There can be healing from writing. A way to express thoughts through creativity. Words are an art form. While we are closed to submissions at this time, our Acquisitions Editors, Lauren Davila and Sangy Crowe look for contemporary and speculative fiction (fantasy, sci-fi and horror) from marginalized authors.

We also partner with other communities and creatives. We are always on the lookout for a project that’s intriguing and fits our mission. We’re currently working with Carlin Thomas and Kate Jackson on a found objects story-based podcast and a locale anthology.

I’m proud of our authors and creatives. They are a diverse group of individuals with compelling stories to tell. They, along with many other small press and self-published authors, fill the large gap that the traditional publishing industry has left. They are telling authentic, complex, unique, stories that you don’t normally see in the traditional publishing world.
As a social worker, I am passionate about showing the untalked about parts of issues that affect our communities. I believe marginalized stories deserve a platform and a safe place to be told. Change cannot happen if we are constantly silencing voices that make us uncomfortable. And some of our stories may make you uncomfortable because they are the visceral, uncensored voice of authors who have powerful stories to tell. We’re not afraid to tell stories from marginalized authors that are hard to hear. Many of our stories are social commentary about mental health, oppression, as well as queer, disabled, and neurodivergent issues.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

Carlin Thomas is one of the original cofounders of Inked in Gray. We actually met at a writers’ group. We were each workshopping a story and found we connected in a lot of ways. After a while, we started talking about dreams and goals, and realized we had similar dreams. We were both tired of the way things were, just a little afraid of taking that initial leap. It’s scary to start your own business. It’s risky as well. But we both have complementing skill sets and are great at motivating each other and lifting each other up. I’m truly grateful for their friendship and everything they’ve taught me over the years.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I have to narrow it down to one? Well, I think the most important lesson I’ve had to unlearn is that I can’t do everything. And most of my life I had to. I grew up with parents who had high expectations. And, to be fair, I was that smart kid who effortlessly got good grades in most things, so when it came to things I struggled with, it was assumed I’d just “figured it out” because smarts is smarts, right? (we all know this is very, very false. Que Einstein’s quote about a fish climbing a tree). There are going to be things we struggle with. No one is perfect. Perfection is unrealistic and unattainable. We shouldn’t strive for perfection in everything because it’s setting us up for failure. And with that, we also can’t *do* everything. Especially not all at once, and especially without rest. Burnout is a real thing. It took me a long time to realize what burn out *in myself* was. I mean, it can easy to be working with a person as a social worker, or when checking in with a friend, and see when a person is burnt out and needs some kind of rest, but when combined with personal high expectations, rest is an afterthought. Like you don’t have time for that, you have all this other stuff to do. Especially as a small business owner. Letting people down was just not an option. It still isn’t, but I’ve learned to adjust my expectations.

In 2022, I went through a nasty divorce. It was a pretty clean break, we both knew it was over, but the fallout from that decimated my mental health and the mental health of my children. Someone they’d known for 10 years was just…gone. And between Inked and WriteHive, a full time job, and now back to being a single parent… I couldn’t do everything. I tried, oh did I try. But it soon became evident that that just wasn’t going to happen. I needed more rest to be the best parent I could be, and the health and well-being of my family comes first. Always. That’s how I manage my company. We adjust expectations based on the needs of the author/creative. Everyone is different and has different needs. I’m not going to add another stressor to someone’s life, cause them mental anguish to meet a deadline or whatever it is just because. We are human. We need flexibility and understanding. Shit happens. So we start with what reasonable expectations look like and go from there.
But I wasn’t doing that with myself. Certain things within Inked were delayed as I took the time I needed to rest. Things still happened, but at a slower pace than I was used to. It hurt, I felt guilty, but everyone was so understanding. I’m better now, and doing better — better at giving myself empathy and understanding. Self care isn’t selfish. Instead of asking yourself if you’ve done enough to deserve rest, ask yourself if you’ve rested enough to do your best.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.inkedingray.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inkedingraypress/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Inkedingraypress
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/inkedingraypub
• Other: (All above are Inked in Gray links. I wasn’t sure if I should include my personal ones or business ones.