📰 The M.I.D Newsletter | Issue #10
What's In The Mind?
Author Makitia Thompson
From the Desk of Minds In Design
Editor’s Note
There is a particular kind of fear that interests me more than any monster ever could.
Not loud fear.
Not chaos.
Not blood for the sake of spectacle.
But the quieter kind.
The kind that grows slowly beneath routines, institutions, relationships, traditions, systems. The kind that hides inside things designed to look normal. The kind that asks a terrifying question:
What if the thing controlling you convinced you it was protecting you?
Welcome to Issue #10 of The M.I.D Newsletter: Deep In The Mind.
This issue arrives during a season of intense creative expansion for Minds In Design. Some stories are growing darker. Others are becoming more emotionally exposed. And increasingly, many of the projects I’m drawn toward are less interested in obvious horror and more interested in psychological architecture, the systems people live inside without realizing they were built to contain them.
That idea is especially important to this issue because for the first time, I’m shifting focus away from Burrington and toward another growing world within the M.I.D universe:
House Of Witnesses.
This series explores control, indoctrination, silence, obedience, identity, and the terrifying moment awareness begins. It is psychological horror in its most intimate form, not merely fear of what exists outside us, but fear of what can be quietly built inside us.
Beyond that, this issue also continues the deeper emotional and creative conversations that define this newsletter: writing advice, reflections on storytelling, featured books, free content, and insight into the growing world of Minds In Design.
If you’ve been here for previous issues, thank you for continuing this journey with me.
And if this is your first time stepping into the world I’ve built here, welcome.
Read this issue slowly.
Some stories are not meant to be consumed quickly.
Some are meant to settle into you.
About Minds In Design
For those encountering this newsletter for the first time, welcome.
Minds In Design is an independent creative publishing space founded by author Makitia Thompson. At its core, the brand exists for one simple reason: to bring imagination to life in ways that linger long after the final page.
From psychological novels to cosmic horror, poetry collections to quotation series, Minds In Design explores the many ways stories can reveal the hidden corners of human experience. Every project published under the M.I.D name shares a common thread, emotional depth, immersive storytelling, and the willingness to explore questions that don’t always have comfortable answers.
Stories, after all, are not just entertainment.
They are mirrors.
They reflect the fears we rarely speak aloud, the love we struggle to define, the mysteries we cannot explain, and the quiet moments that shape who we become.
Minds In Design exists to give those reflections a home.
Whether through novels, poetry, short fiction, essays, or quotation collections, the goal is always the same: to create work that readers carry with them long after the book has been closed.
If you are here because you love stories that challenge, haunt, comfort, or awaken something inside you, then you are exactly where you’re meant to be.
House Of Witnesses | Series Spotlight
This issue’s major spotlight belongs to one of the darkest and most psychologically layered projects currently growing within Minds In Design:
House Of Witnesses
With two books already published and a third installment arriving later this month, House Of Witnesses is quickly becoming one of the defining psychological horror series within the M.I.D catalogue.
At the center of the series is Clara Roberts, a young woman raised inside a world built on silence, structure, obedience, and invisible control.
In Clara’s life, everything has a place.
Nothing exists without purpose.
And questioning that order has never felt necessary.
Not the stillness.
Not the routines.
Not the strange feeling that everything is always being watched.
But systems like that do not emerge accidentally.
And they do not sustain themselves without reason.
What begins as subtle unease slowly unfolds into something far larger than Clara ever imagined: a buried structure designed not simply to control behavior, but to reshape identity itself.
The horror of House Of Witnesses is not rooted in jump scares or spectacle.
It lives in surveillance.
Conditioning.
Isolation.
Faith manipulated into obedience.
The terrifying realization that awareness itself can become dangerous.
As Clara begins uncovering the truth behind the system surrounding her, she comes to understand something horrifying:
This was never about one family.
Never about one house.
Never even about one town.
It is a structure.
A carefully maintained machine designed to erase resistance before resistance can fully form.
And whatever has been watching her…
has been watching for far longer than she has been alive.
The series explores themes of indoctrination, identity erosion, institutional control, and psychological dependence through a slow-burning, atmospheric lens that prioritizes tension over noise and emotional unraveling over spectacle.
At its core, House Of Witnesses asks a question I think is deeply unsettling:
What happens when a person realizes the world shaping them was never designed for their freedom?
And perhaps even worse:
What if they were designed never to question it at all?
For readers who enjoy psychological horror grounded in emotional realism, creeping paranoia, and layered systems of control, House Of Witnesses continues to grow into something increasingly disturbing and increasingly difficult to forget.
What’s New in the M.I.D Universe
The M.I.D universe continues expanding across multiple genres, emotional landscapes, and storytelling forms. This issue’s featured releases remain two projects that reflect very different aspects of my creative voice.
One explores cosmic inevitability.
The other explores grief with unbearable honesty.
And both are deeply rooted in the fear of what remains after something changes us permanently.
What Removes Us
One of the strongest recent additions to the Minds In Design catalogue is my slow-burn cosmic horror novel What Removes Us.
Set in the quiet town of Brackenridge, the novel follows Jesse Calder, a man who begins noticing something impossible: subtle distortions in the air surrounding certain people.
Moments later, those people disappear.
At first Jesse believes the pattern is coincidence. But gradually the disappearances begin revealing something far older and more terrifying than he could have imagined.
The town has been losing people for years.
Quietly. Systematically.
And almost no one remembers them long enough to question it.
Currently sitting in the Top 10 of Cosmic & Eldritch Horror on Amazon Canada, What Removes Us has become one of the most successful horror releases within the Minds In Design catalogue.
The novel embraces slow tension, psychological unease, and existential dread rather than relying on fast-paced spectacle. It asks readers to sit inside uncertainty and perhaps worse, inevitability.
Because some horrors do not attack.
They wait patiently for you to notice them.
And by then, it may already be too late.
Yes, I Cry.
Alongside horror, another emotionally raw addition to the M.I.D catalogue continues finding readers:
Yes, I Cry.
This deeply intimate poetry collection explores grief in all its forms; heartbreak, emotional exhaustion, longing, sorrow, memory, and the quiet ache that remains long after healing is supposedly meant to arrive.
The poems inside this collection do not romanticize pain.
They do not attempt to transform grief into something decorative or inspirational for the comfort of an audience.
Instead, they tell the truth about what it means to carry emotional weight while continuing to survive.
The collection speaks especially to those mourning not only people, but former versions of themselves, abandoned futures, and tenderness that life did not allow them to keep.
Yes, I Cry. exists for readers who need honesty more than perfection.
And perhaps that is why it resonates so deeply.
The Mind’s Keepsake Series
Beyond novels and poetry collections, another body of work that continues to grow quietly within Minds In Design is The Mind’s Keepsake quotation series.
This collection was created for readers who love the emotional resonance of language itself, the kind of words that seem to arrive at exactly the right moment.
Each volume gathers quotations, reflections, and passages centered around themes of love, grief, resilience, memory, longing, healing, uncertainty, and the strange complexity of being human.
These books are intentionally designed differently from traditional narrative works.
They are meant to be revisited.
Held onto.
Returned to repeatedly.
Opened at random during difficult seasons of life.
The series is currently available through multiple platforms including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, select libraries, and additional retailers.
For readers searching for words that stay with them beyond the page, The Mind’s Keepsake offers something quiet but lasting.
Writing Tip for Authors
Stop trying to sound like a writer
One of the biggest traps writers fall into, especially online, is performing “writerliness” instead of writing honestly.
You can always feel the difference.
One version sounds polished but emotionally empty.
The other feels alive.
Many writers become so focused on sounding intelligent, literary, profound, or marketable that they begin sanding down the very thing readers actually connect to: authenticity.
Beautiful prose matters. Craft matters. Technique matters.
But readers rarely remember a sentence because it was technically impressive.
They remember it because it revealed something true.
If you find yourself overcomplicating scenes, ask yourself:
Am I writing this to communicate something?
Or am I writing this to prove I can write?
Those are very different goals.
The strongest writing often comes from clarity, precision, emotional honesty, and restraint, not from trying to sound important.
Your voice becomes powerful the moment it stops trying to perform itself.
Book of the Month
This month’s featured book is What Removes Us, my slow-burn cosmic horror novel currently sitting in the Top 10 of Cosmic & Eldritch Horror on Amazon Canada.
This book has become one of the most fascinating experiences of my writing career because of how quietly it built momentum.
What Removes Us is not horror designed for instant gratification.
It is not loud.
It does not rush.
Instead, it invites readers into a slowly destabilizing atmosphere where the dread grows heavier with every chapter.
At its center is Jesse Calder, a man trying to understand why people in Brackenridge are disappearing and why no one seems capable of remembering the missing for very long.
The deeper Jesse investigates, the more horrifying the truth becomes.
Not because everything is explained.
But because some things are never fully explainable.
And that uncertainty becomes its own kind of terror.
The novel was written for readers who enjoy horror that lingers psychologically rather than relying solely on immediate shocks. Horror built around inevitability, observation, memory, and the terrifying possibility that human understanding has limits we were never meant to cross.
What I love most about this book is that it trusts the reader.
It allows mystery to remain mystery.
And in horror, I think that matters deeply.
Because once something becomes fully explainable, it often becomes less frightening.
The unknown, however, stays with us.
Makitia’s Writing Corner
Writers are competing with noise now, not other writers
The creative landscape has changed dramatically.
Readers are overwhelmed with content. Endless scrolling, constant stimulation. Thousands of books competing for attention every single day.
And because of that, many writers are beginning to panic.
They feel pressure to produce faster.
Post constantly.
Simplify themselves into trends.
Chase algorithms instead of building voice.
But here is what I genuinely believe:
The future belongs to writers who create depth in an age obsessed with speed.
Readers still crave immersion.
They still crave atmosphere.
They still crave emotional honesty.
The problem is not that readers no longer care about meaningful stories.
The problem is that meaningful stories now have to survive inside louder environments.
So instead of trying to out-volume everyone else, focus on becoming unforgettable.
Write books people underline.
Write scenes people revisit.
Write characters people think about weeks later.
Noise disappears quickly.
Depth stays.
Article of the Month
This month’s featured article remains one of the most personally meaningful essays I’ve written recently:
“Why Vulnerability Is Sacred in Black Writing”
The article explores vulnerability not as weakness, but as survival, reverence, and emotional preservation within Black literature.
Too often, Black writers are expected to provide resilience without softness, endurance without interiority, and strength without visible emotional complexity.
But vulnerability has always existed at the center of Black storytelling.
To write honestly while Black is often to risk being misunderstood, simplified, flattened, or consumed by audiences uncomfortable with emotional nuance.
And yet vulnerability remains sacred precisely because it preserves humanity against systems that historically tried to erase it.
This piece explores why emotional openness in Black writing matters, not only artistically, but culturally and psychologically.
You can read the full article here:
Free Content from Minds In Design
One of the goals behind Minds In Design has always been accessibility, not only through books, but through free creative experiences readers can step into immediately.
Through my blog, readers can access:
- Free short stories
- Writing advice
- Publishing reflections
- Behind-the-scenes content
- Additional fictional material
- Expanded worldbuilding
- Creative essays and articles
The blog continues serving as both a creative archive and a gateway into the larger M.I.D universe.
For readers curious about my work, it offers an opportunity to experience my storytelling style before purchasing a novel or collection.
And for returning readers, it provides additional layers to worlds they already love.
Minds In Design is dedicated to offering entertainment, insight, and emotional resonance in every form possible.
Because stories should not exist only behind paywalls.
Sometimes the first doorway into a world should simply be curiosity.
Upcoming Projects
The Minds In Design catalogue continues expanding steadily, with several new projects currently in development across multiple genres.
Upcoming work includes:
- New poetry collections
- Additional quotation and passage books
- Short story collections
- Psychological fiction
- Horror projects
- Expanded companion content connected to larger fictional worlds
Readers can also continue exploring the growing catalogue already available, including:
What Removes Us
A slow-burn cosmic horror novel rooted in disappearance, inevitability, and existential dread.
I Only Ever Wanted You
A psychologically charged thriller-romance exploring obsession, longing, and emotional instability.
I Am The Unspoken
A novel following Madeline as she attempts to reclaim herself after trauma and confront what survival truly costs.
House Of Witnesses
A psychological horror series exploring indoctrination, identity erosion, and systems of control.
All titles remain available across major retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, Indigo, Bookshop.org, Fable, select libraries, and more.
Connect With Me
Readers who want to stay connected with Minds In Design can find me across the following platforms:
Each platform offers different glimpses into the creative process behind Minds In Design, from writing reflections and book updates to behind-the-scenes insight into the worlds I continue building.
Parting Words
There is a reason psychological horror stays with people differently than other forms of fear.
It is not simply because it frightens us. It is because it unsettles our understanding of ourselves. The best psychological stories do not merely ask, “What if something terrible happens?”
They ask something much more disturbing:
What if the terrible thing already exists quietly inside the systems surrounding us?
That question sits at the center of so much of the work I create now.
Not just in House Of Witnesses, but across Minds In Design as a whole.
The fear of losing identity.
The fear of silence becoming normal.
The fear of forgetting ourselves gradually instead of suddenly.
But alongside those fears, there is another idea I continue returning to:
Awareness matters.
Stories matter because awareness matters.
They help us notice things.
Question things.
Feel things more honestly.
And whether I’m writing horror, poetry, psychological fiction, or quotation collections, that remains the purpose behind every project I release:
To create stories that leave something behind in the reader after the final page.
Thank you for reading Issue #10 of The M.I.D Newsletter: What's In The Mind.
And thank you for continuing to step deeper into the worlds I create.
Until next time,
Makitia Thompson
Founder, Minds In Design
#Makitia #MindsInDesign #TheMidUniverse #HouseOfWitnesses #WhereTimeCantExist #MidStories #UntilTimeRemembers #MakitiaThompson #BecauseIFeltEverything
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