📖 Everyone Deserves to See Themselves in a Book. So Danni Maxwell Keeps Writing Them

Photo: Hannah Jones

The doors do not open. It has already been a bad run, and now there is nothing to do but stand in a stopped elevator, certain this is not going to end well. The only company is a voice on the emergency phone, a stranger who talks about anything and everything and keeps promising there will be a way out.

That is where Georgie Wright begins in Lift Me Up, the new novel from Kingston author Danni Maxwell. Georgie is between jobs, lives with a chronic illness, and has a yarn habit she cannot afford. She is also, in many of the ways that matter, Danni.

Georgie Wright, the main character of Lift Me Up, has the same chronic illness as Danni Maxwell, the same hobbies, and much the same personality. Danni Maxwell was diagnosed with Hidradenitis Suppurativa at nine years old, an autoimmune condition that presents as a skin condition, and she has lived with it ever since.

"I feel like Georgie is very similar to me in most aspects," Danni told Kingston Spotlight. Georgie is confident on the good days and convinced of being a burden on the bad ones, which Danni says is most days. "She is kind, and caring, and so much more than her illness."

That closeness made the character easy to write. "Georgie was always easy to write because everything she experienced has been a lived experience for myself in some form," Danni said.

It also made the book harder to let go of. Danni told us there was a real worry that readers would find Georgie unlikeable, because Georgie pushes people away in the middle of a flare, and that pushing comes from guilt rather than from coldness.

Reading Georgie back as a separate person, rather than as a version of the author, brought something else into focus. The fear of being a burden was not only Georgie's.

Lift Me Up opens with an author's note that Danni wanted sitting in front of the story: this is one person's experience of chronic illness, it will not match everyone's, and that does not make any of those experiences less valid. It ends on who the book is for. "You deserve representation. You deserve love. You deserve happiness. This book is for us."

The reassurance came from a reader. Danni told Kingston Spotlight that a friend who also lives with chronic illness read the book recently and said it made her feel seen, left her hopeful about finding her person one day, and that this was a story that needed telling. Danni called the validation humbling.

Danni Maxwell has been telling stories since early childhood, though writing them down did not become a habit until the teenage years. Two things got it going: a love of storytelling, and, admittedly, a love for a boy band.

Fanfiction came first, and Danni was good at it. One piece ran past 300,000 words and picked up more than 200,000 reads. The appeal was the alternate universe, taking characters everyone already knew and changing the world around them. The pairings started out male and female, then shifted to male and male.

Then came an annual challenge to write 50,000 words during the month of November, and with it a first full length original work. "I was hooked, and it blossomed from there," Danni told Kingston Spotlight.

It turned into a book in a high school writer's craft class. Danni wrote a short story there, partly because a fanfiction idea had outgrown its origins, and partly because friends kept asking for a book with representation for them. Most mainstream romance at the time paired a man and a woman, and those friends were not finding themselves anywhere in it. That short story became A World in Blue, published by NineStar Press about a year after it was written. Goldie followed in 2020 and Life in Colour in 2021.

The pattern has held ever since. Danni writes representation drawn from lived experience, or checked with someone trusted who can answer the questions and keep it accurate. Which is how a plus size heroine with a chronic illness ends up front and centre on a cheerful pink cover.

Danni Maxwell's four novels in order of publication, from A World in Blue to Lift Me Up. Cover art for the first three commissioned by NineStar Press.

Lift Me Up took years, and for a long stretch it did not move at all.

"I lost my dad in 2022 and it halted my writing for a very long time," Danni told Kingston Spotlight.

The book did eventually get finished, through draft after draft. Then life kept arriving. A very rough twin pregnancy in 2023, and after that the medication for the chronic illness stopped working. Earlier attempts to place the book with a traditional publisher had gone nowhere, and by that point Danni had essentially given up on it ever coming out at all.

What changed was a weekend in Windsor, at the Rose City Romance Conference at Caesars Windsor, a gathering of romance authors, readers and vendors that includes a full day of workshops for writers. Doing it alone stopped looking impossible there, and the editors who ended up working on Lift Me Up were people Danni met at that event.

From there it took the better part of a year of working with everyone involved: the edits, the cover, and all the rest of what stands between a finished manuscript and a book somebody can buy.

Lift Me Up is the first book Danni Maxwell has published independently. The three before it came out through NineStar Press.

The difference this time was control. Danni told Kingston Spotlight the goal was to "take the publishing control into my own hands and learn as I go".

Learning as you go turned out to be a bigger job than expected. "I was surprised to learn how extensive it is to publish, all the different things you have to do in order for it to be reader ready," Danni said. All of it fitted around a chronic illness and, since 2023, toddler twins.

The cover nearly ended the whole thing.

Danni Maxwell had been told the first artist was reputable, and had seen covers she had done for people Danni knew and trusted. The fees were paid and the cover was booked in for September 2025. In the week the work was meant to start, the money came back instead, as a partial refund with no explanation attached.

Digging through social media posts turned up why. Danni told Kingston Spotlight the artist was under fire for tracing other people's work and passing it off as original. The artist has since come off social media and, as far as Danni knows, has not come back.

Getting the rest of the money back took repeated messages, an argument about exchange rates, and a final four dollar dispute over a PayPal merchant fee the artist had been charged and wanted to pass along. It did all come back. "I did end up getting my money back, so I was one of the fortunate ones," Danni said.

What it left behind was hesitation, at a point when another cover artist was still needed and most of them were charging more than the budget could take. So Danni put out a call on TikTok as a last try.

Danielle answered. Danielle of Designs by Danielle had worked with traditional publishers as well as indie authors, and the cover on Lift Me Up came out of that: the pink elevator, the bag of yarn, the dog in the green bow.

Danni's advice for anyone going the same route is to learn how to spot AI art, look into a person properly before agreeing to work with them, and treat too good to be true as the warning it usually is. If you are unsure, ask reputable artists how they tell.

Lift Me Up was edited by Erik and Kristy Tucsok of Dead Trees and Ink, with marketing pulls by Kate at Ripped Pages.

We ask everyone we feature for a local business they want to shout out. Danni had one ready.

"I would love to shout out Nora's Coffee & Sandwiches on Bath Road! I went there multiple times during the editing process of Lift Me Up and every time the staff were fantastic, seemed genuinely interested that I was there to write, the food and drinks are delicious and the atmosphere made it so easy to work on edits without interruption. I 10/10 recommend them whenever someone asks for a coffee spot!"

There is a second one, and it comes with the book. The Blushing Page, a local bookish business, is taking copies of Lift Me Up for A Romance Under Wraps and for its website. Danni asked us to name Amy there, who has been extremely kind throughout.

One place made room for the writing and the other is making room for the book.

Author photos by Hannah Jones.