About VeXa
The Dark Rose Emporium™ is a curated space for dark literature, alternative lifestyle, home decor, sensual products and community.
Founded by VeXa Nightbloom®, Dark Rose was created for readers, outsiders and people who have never quite felt that they fit into society’s mold.
Books are at the heart of what we do. Our focus includes Dark Romance, Dark Fiction, Erotic Fiction, Gothic Romance, Dark Fantasy and independent literature, with curation that goes beyond tropes, spice levels and pretty covers. We believe stories can entertain us, disturb us, challenge us, give us somewhere to escape and sometimes help us understand parts of ourselves we have struggled to put into words.
Much of VeXa’s work is research-informed, drawing on research and perspectives from areas such as bibliotherapy, narrative psychology, identity, trauma, reader experience and the ways fiction can affect us emotionally. This work also informs The Dark Narrative Reflection Framework™ (DNRF™), a non-clinical reflection framework created to explore recognition, emotional activation, meaning, identity and the personal relationship between reader and story.
DNRF™ is not therapy, diagnosis or mental-health treatment.
Dark Rose also stands firmly for women’s right to bodily and sexual autonomy. Women have the right to desire, explore fantasy, set boundaries, say yes, say no and define their own sexuality without shame. What a woman reads, fantasises about or finds sexually interesting does not determine her morality, her values or what she wants to happen to her in real life.
We also stand firmly with survivors of sexual violence, abuse and trauma. We actively challenge victim-blaming, shaming, ridicule and the harmful assumptions still directed at people who have already been through enough.
Through research-informed education, we work to increase understanding of trauma responses, survivor experiences and the many different ways people process what has happened to them. Survivors should not have to perform their trauma in a way society considers acceptable in order to be believed, treated with dignity or taken seriously. They should not be mocked, blamed or judged because their reactions, sexuality, coping mechanisms or relationship with fiction do not look the way someone else expects them to.
People who have survived abuse have already carried enough. They should not have to carry society’s judgment as well.
Dark Rose also works actively to challenge the stigma surrounding dark literature in Sweden. Fiction can explore disturbing, taboo, violent and morally complex subjects without endorsing those things in reality. Fantasy is not consent. Fiction is not confession. And enjoying a fictional narrative does not automatically reveal someone’s morality, desires or real-life boundaries.
We advocate for genre literacy, informed reading, reader responsibility and the right of adults to engage with difficult fiction without being shamed for it. We believe conversations about dark literature should be based on context, research and critical thinking rather than fear, assumptions or moral panic.
Dark Rose is also home to Dark Rose Emporium Publishing®, our independent publishing branch. Our aim is to support and publish stories that belong within the Dark Rose world while protecting the individual voice of the author rather than forcing every story into the same mould.
Beyond books, Dark Rose brings together alternative fashion, home decor, bookish products, sensual products and events, with consent, curiosity, individuality and personal expression running through everything we do.
We are not here to tell people how they should read, dress, desire or exist.
We are here to create space for people who have spent far too much of their lives being told that some part of them is wrong.
Where Outsiders Belong®