I grew up in a house in the middle of the desert with my nose buried in books — dictionaries, Shakespeare, animal encyclopedias, diaries, anything I could get my hands on. Stories were my escape and my education.

Then came the seizures. For years, everything I’d read and watched told me they meant demonic possession. Horror movies and paranormal tales became my lifeline because, in them, I wasn’t alone. At 13, a book and a film helped me realize I might have epilepsy. At 16, a Holocaust museum taught me that the stories we’re told are never the whole truth. Ever since, I’ve wondered why characters like me — or like so many others — are so hard to find on the page.

Writing became my way to answer that question. My stories didn’t fit industry formulas; they didn’t have the compulsory romantic subplots publishers demanded. And I learned that if you want to self-publish for a living, your best bet is writing erotica — which wasn’t my style either.

So I built Nightstand. While initially begun as a gag and asexual joke, our platform exists for people who are lonely and want to change that. It is for all the authors out there wondering if there’s anyone else out there in the void of the internet looking for a story like their own. It places new books on the same field as old books and gives lesser known people a chance in the wake of popularity algorithms.