Monica Connon is a literary fiction writer based in Eastern North Carolina. After retiring from a Navy career that carried her through 52 countries and across multiple oceans, she became increasingly attuned to the systems that govern both institutions and everyday life. Years spent inside formal hierarchies sharpened her understanding of authority, loyalty, exile, and survival—forces that operate just as powerfully in domestic spaces as they do on a global stage.

That awareness informs her interconnected short story series, Tails of the Midnight Kingdom. Set within a sovereign domestic court of cats, the series uses allegory and restrained speculative elements to examine power, belonging, and the fragile architecture of social order. The cats are not ornamental or whimsical; they function within a living structure of territory, allegiance, and negotiation that mirrors human systems with unsettling clarity.

Her work occupies the space between ritual and myth, where sovereignty can exist on a kitchen counter and exile can begin at the edge of a hallway. She favors implication over explanation, allowing meaning to emerge through behavior rather than declaration. The Pride who share her home provide both inspiration and ongoing constitutional challenge.