About Malice Blūm
Why "Malice"?
Malice was a name I was given a long time ago by a relative. I’m autistic, and because of that I sometimes miss social cues. I’ve said things that came out wrong without meaning them to, and I’ve mistaken anger for happiness more than once. Needless to say, the nickname stuck.
At first it was half insult, half affectionate teasing. But over time, it became something I chose to reclaim. Now, the thoughts, feelings, and observations that once got me into trouble find their way into my poetry, stories, drawings, and lyrics instead.
Together, my art forms the multimedia Malice World — a place built from the same spark that gave me the name in the first place.
Why Poetry?
I’ve been writing poetry throughout my life—not to be seen, but to survive. Poetry was how I learned to express myself before I had the language to explain who I was. It is how I make sense of the world when it feels too sharp or overwhelming, and how I process the things I’ve lived through, witnessed, and still carry.
These poems are often metaphorical, but they come from real places: loss, perseverance, lessons learned the hard way, love and anger, and the quiet moments of reckoning that follow endurance.
I spent much of my secondary school years hidden away in the library, reading writers who were unafraid of darkness, contradiction, and truth—William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, and Maya Angelou among them. Their work shaped not only how I think about language, but what I believe poetry is capable of holding. They taught me that words can be beautiful and brutal at once—quiet in one line, thunderous in the next. Their influence lives not only in my style, but in my refusal to look away from difficult things.
Much of my work centers on the feminine experience in all its forms: beauty, tenderness, fury, grief, resilience, and the contradictions women are often taught to hide. I write about women who are soft and women who are loud; mothers and non-mothers; those who are believed and those who are ignored. I write about bodies that are celebrated and punished, protected and violated, worshipped and controlled. I write about the cost of existing as a woman in a world that often asks us to be everything and nothing at once.
I do not write to provide answers. I write to tell the truth as I know it, to remind others they do not suffer alone, and to show that even in the darkness there is light.
Why Visual Art?
Art has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. When I was little, drawing was my escape—a place where I could build my own world when the real one felt too loud or too heavy.
But drawing what you see and what you feel can make people uncomfortable. As a child, my art reflected the world around me and the way I understood it. Not everyone appreciated that honesty, and over time drawing became something that caused more trouble than it was worth. Eventually, I stopped taking it seriously and limited myself to small doodles in the margins of notebooks. Doodles are safe. Doodles don’t start arguments.
Years later, my health took a sharp turn. My seizures worsened, my asthma escalated, and I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. Everything seemed to change at once, and I found myself overwhelmed by a body and a life that no longer felt fully under my control.
But by then, my life had changed in another way too. I was married, living with my husband, and finally in a place where I could create without fear of being punished for it.
So I started drawing again.
What surprised me most wasn’t just how much I needed art—it was discovering that I was actually good at it. The thing that had once been shut down became something people encouraged and celebrated. That shift changed everything.
Now art is one of the ways I make sense of the world again. Sometimes it reflects what I see. Sometimes it reflects what I feel. And sometimes it is simply a way to take chaos—whether from life, memory, or illness—and turn it into something I can place outside myself.
Why Short Stories?
I’ve been writing short stories since first grade. Stories were one of the first ways I learned to explore worlds beyond my own. I spent much of my secondary school years tucked away in the library reading classics like Beowulf, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, Sherlock Holmes, Romeo and Juliet, and The Odyssey. Those stories taught me that entire worlds could exist within a handful of pages.
For me, writing has always been a form of escape. Through stories, I can build worlds that reflect how I’m feeling or help me process the things happening around me. I can create places where I feel safe, loved, adventurous, or understood. Sometimes those worlds help me face things indirectly—whether they are events unfolding in the wider world or struggles much closer to home.
Storytelling also helps organize the chaos of my mind. When everything feels tangled, writing gives me a way to shape thoughts, emotions, and experiences into something I can follow. A story can take something confusing or frightening and turn it into something I can better understand.
These days, though, my stories are not just for me. As a parent, I’ve found myself writing stories to help my children understand the world around them too. Through characters and adventures, I can explore difficult subjects, encourage empathy, and spark curiosity.
Now I write not only to escape, but to educate, to connect, and sometimes to open people’s eyes—whether they are adults or children discovering the world for the first time.
Why Music?
Music has always been part of my life. Autism, for me, comes with echolalia and heightened senses. It can be overwhelming at times, but it also means I experience sound in layers, hearing rhythm and tone in everything from machinery to birdsong to passing conversations. Repeating sounds and matching pitch and pattern became one of the ways I learned to navigate a world that often felt too loud.
Over time, that connection deepened. I joined choir in church, learning operatic psalms, and later school choir, where I was introduced to jazz and musical theater. Outside of that, I was surrounded by music through family, friends, and neighbors. Every voice, genre, and rhythm shaped the way I hear and experience sound.
Now, that sense of music is always there. I hear it constantly as I move through the world, and it naturally finds its way into my writing. What begins as a feeling, a cadence, or a fragment of sound often becomes poetry—and eventually, lyrics.