Behind The Author
BEHIND THE AUTHOR
Meet Makitia Thompson
Every creative company begins with a person.
Behind Minds In Design, its publications, artwork, fictional worlds, and growing catalogue of stories is Makitia Thompson; an independent author, artist, publisher, and creator whose work is built around one recurring idea:
There is always another world hiding inside an idea.
Makitia Thompson is the founder of Minds In Design, an independent creative and publishing company established as a home for imagination in its many forms.
Her work spans fiction, artwork, publishing, worldbuilding, and experimental storytelling, with a particular interest in stories that explore unsettling questions, hidden systems, complicated people, and worlds that are not always what they first appear to be.
For Makitia, creating has never been about staying inside one category.
It is about following the idea wherever it leads.
BEFORE THE BOOKS
Writing may now be at the center of Minds In Design, but it was not where the creative journey began.
Art was an important early part of Makitia's creative life.
For a time, visual art was the primary way ideas were expressed. Painting offered a different language, one that did not require characters, chapters, dialogue, or explanations.
An image could communicate an atmosphere without explaining it.
A painting could leave something unanswered.
A blank canvas could become an entire world.
That relationship with visual creativity would eventually become one of the foundations of Minds In Design.
But eventually, another form of storytelling began demanding attention.
Words.
FROM ART TO STORYTELLING
The transition from visual art into writing was not a decision to abandon one creative identity for another.
It became an expansion of it.
Stories offered possibilities that a single image could not always contain.
Characters could change.
Worlds could develop histories.
Mysteries could unfold slowly.
Questions could remain unanswered for hundreds of pages. A fictional world could continue existing long after the first chapter ended.
Writing opened a much larger canvas.
And that eventually led to the creation of Minds In Design as something broader than an art platform.
It became a place where both visual and written creativity could exist.
THE CREATION OF MINDS IN DESIGN
Minds In Design was founded by Makitia Thompson with a simple purpose:
to create a space for imagination to be brought to life.
The name reflects the philosophy behind the work.
Ideas do not have to remain ideas.
They can be designed.
They can be shaped.
They can become stories, paintings, books, characters, fictional worlds, articles, and entire creative projects. M.I.D. became the framework through which those ideas could be developed and shared.
As the company grew, publishing increasingly became a major part of its identity.
What began as creative exploration developed into independent authorship and publishing.
And with every publication, the world behind M.I.D. became larger.
BECOMING AN INDEPENDENT AUTHOR
Independent publishing gave Makitia the opportunity to build her catalogue according to the kind of stories she wanted to tell.
Rather than limiting her work to one genre, she has gravitated toward darker and more suspenseful forms of storytelling.
Her publications explore genres including:
Horror
Thriller
Mystery
Suspense
Poetry
Fictional Documentaries
Fantasy
and more
These genres offer something Makitia particularly enjoys as a creator: uncertainty.
The moment when something does not quite make sense. The detail that seems insignificant until much later, the question that refuses to go away, the character who knows something the reader does not and the world that appears ordinary until its underlying structure begins to reveal itself.
For Makitia, suspense is not only about what happens next.
It is about what the audience does not yet understand.
THE HOUSE OF WITNESSES ERA
One of the defining projects of Makitia's writing career is House Of Witnesses, a large horror and suspense series that developed into a much larger fictional universe.
The series began with a central question:
What happens when the place you were taught to trust is the very system you should fear?
From that question came Clara Roberts, the Chapel of Witness, the Witnessed, the Keepers, the hidden chambers, and a world built around silence, obedience, identity, control, and the frightening consequences of discovering that the life you believed was yours may have been constructed for you.
The first novel established the foundation.
The books that follow expand it.
But the world does not stop at the novels.
BUILDING A WORLD BEYOND THE NOVEL
One of the most important aspects of Makitia's approach to storytelling is the belief that a fictional world does not have to disappear when the final page of a novel is turned.
Some stories leave behind questions. Some characters have histories that never appear in the main narrative. Some events are better understood through another perspective.
Some pieces of information feel as though they belong in a document, testimony, record, interview, or fragment rather than a traditional chapter.
This became particularly important with the development of the Witness Universe.
Companion publications, fictional documents, alternative perspectives, testimonies, interviews, and other forms of material allow different parts of the world to exist outside the main novels.
The result is a universe that can be explored rather than simply read.
WRITING WITH QUESTIONS
Makitia's approach to storytelling is strongly connected to questions.
Not every story needs to immediately explain itself.
Sometimes the most interesting part of a story is the space between what the audience knows and what it suspects.
That space creates room for discovery.
It allows readers to notice patterns.
It allows seemingly ordinary details to become significant.
It allows a world to feel larger than the pages currently being read.
This is especially important in horror.
Fear does not always come from seeing everything.
Sometimes it comes from realizing that there is something you have not seen yet.
THE STORIES BEHIND THE STORIES
A finished novel is only one layer of the creative process.
Behind it are outlines, character histories, discarded ideas, worldbuilding notes, timelines, questions, revisions, and decisions that may never appear in the final publication.
Makitia's creative process often involves developing the world beyond what the reader immediately needs to know.
That allows the story to have depth even when much of that depth remains invisible.
A character may have a history that never becomes a chapter. An institution may have rules that are never fully explained. A fictional society may have an entire structure existing beyond the boundaries of the protagonist's experience.
The reader may only see a fraction.
But the world still exists.
That is part of the design.
MORE THAN ONE KIND OF CREATOR
Although writing has become a major part of Makitia's work, she does not consider herself limited to being an author.
She is a creator first.
That distinction matters.
Writing is one medium.
Painting is another.
Publishing is another.
Worldbuilding is another.
The M.I.D. Universe provides room for those different forms of creativity to overlap without requiring them to become identical.
A painting does not need to become a book and a book does not need to become a painting. A blog post does not need to become a publication.
Each project can become what it needs to become.
RETURNING TO ART
As writing and publishing became increasingly central to Minds In Design, visual art temporarily moved into the background.
That period was not an ending.
It became part of the larger creative journey.
Now, artwork is returning as an important part of M.I.D.'s identity. Makitia's artwork exists alongside her publications as another way of exploring ideas visually.
Selected works are made available through print products and canvas artwork, allowing the art to reach audiences in forms beyond the original pieces.
The return to art also reflects something important about creativity:
Sometimes a medium needs to step away so another can grow.
And sometimes it comes back with something new to say.
THE PUBLISHER BEHIND THE AUTHOR
Being an independent author also means being involved in the parts of publishing that readers rarely see.
Writing the manuscript is only the beginning.
There is editing.
Formatting.
Cover development.
Distribution.
Audiobooks.
Ebooks.
Print editions.
Promotion.
Reader communication.
Website development.
Companion content.
And the constant process of figuring out how to bring a creative project into the world independently.
Makitia's work through Minds In Design combines those creative and publishing responsibilities. The result is not simply a collection of books.
It is a growing body of work built from the ground up.
THE IMPORTANCE OF INDEPENDENCE
Independence is not simply a publishing arrangement for M.I.D.
It is part of the creative philosophy.
Independent work allows Makitia to make room for unusual ideas. It allows projects to develop at their own pace. It allows stories to expand into companion material when the world calls for it.
It allows artwork and writing to exist alongside one another.
Most importantly, it allows the creative direction to remain connected to the person who created the idea in the first place.
That freedom comes with responsibility.
Every decision belongs to the creator.
But so does every possibility.
WHY HORROR?
Horror provides a particularly interesting space for exploring human behavior.
It can take something familiar and make it strange.
It can turn a home into a question.
A family into a mystery, a tradition into a threat or a trusted institution into something that demands closer examination.
Horror does not always need monsters.
Sometimes the most unsettling stories are built from systems, expectations, secrets, relationships, and the realization that something has been wrong for much longer than anyone wants to admit.
That is the kind of territory Makitia is drawn toward.
THE AUTHOR'S WORLDS
The worlds created through Minds In Design are not all connected to one another.
They do not need to be.
Each story is allowed to establish its own rules, atmosphere, characters, and questions. But they share something in common. They are built to make the reader look twice.
To question what seems obvious. To wonder what exists outside the immediate story and to keep thinking about the world after the book has been put down.
That is the kind of experience Makitia wants her work to create.
BEYOND HOUSE OF WITNESSES
House Of Witnesses is one of the largest creative projects within Minds In Design, but it is not the end of the journey.
There are other stories.
Other genres.
Other series.
Other worlds waiting to be developed.
Some will be dark.
Some will be mysterious.
Some will be unsettling.
And some may move in directions that are not yet obvious.
The catalogue will continue to evolve.
So will the creator behind it.
WHAT COMES NEXT?
The future of Minds In Design is intentionally open.
There are books still to be written, stories still to be developed, artwork still to be created.
Worlds still to be explored. Companion projects still to be imagined and ideas that have not yet found their final form.
That is part of the excitement.
A creative career does not have to be a straight line.
It can branch.
It can change.
It can return to old interests.
It can discover completely new ones.
Minds In Design was created to make room for that evolution.
WELCOME BEHIND THE WORK
If you have discovered Minds In Design through a novel, you are seeing one part of the work. If you discovered it through artwork, you are seeing another. If you found the Journal, you may be seeing the ideas behind both.
And if you entered through House Of Witnesses, you may already have discovered that the story extends far beyond a single book.
Behind all of it is a creator who continues to explore what an idea can become.
Makitia Thompson
Author. Artist. Independent publisher. Creator.
And behind the work is a simple question that continues to guide Minds In Design:
What can you create when you give an idea room to become something real?
EXPLORE THE WORK
Books
Discover the published novels, series, and companion publications.
House Of Witnesses
Enter the Witness Universe and explore the novels and expanding collection of companion content.
M.I.D. Universe
Discover the creative machinery behind the stories, worlds, companion material, Journal content, and more.
Artwork
Explore Makitia Thompson's visual work and discover available prints and canvas pieces.
Journal
Read free articles, creative reflections, publishing updates, and behind-the-scenes material.
Minds In Design
Learn more about the company and the creative philosophy behind it.