Riddled with tales of obsession, drugs, rock and roll, copy cats and scapegoats, Fatal Distraction is a play on Fatal Attraction, a Hollywood movie from the mid-eighties about female obsession and gender stereotypes. With explorations into how some of us distract ourselves from the horrors of the world and our very own lives, the dark themes in the novel are tempered by naïveté and a dry, subtle humour sometimes disguised by lovely images of totem creatures and pretty girls. In a 250-odd-page graphic novel, Ahlers' stories are told in shades and fleeting micro images. Combining fragments of text, drawing and collage, Fatal Distraction, the follow-up to the groundbreaking Temper, Temper (Insomniac Press, 1998), is a truthful, disrupted narrative which fuses the worlds of literature and art.

Sonja Ahlers is a visual artist and poet from Victoria, BC. Her books are hard to classify and can be found in several different sections of the library.

1994's A WANDERING EYE was the first of many self-published books that circulated mainly through the underground "penpal" network of punk rock and Riot grrrl zines. Ahlers attracted national attention with TEMPER, TEMPER, published by Insomniac Press in 1998, followed by FATAL DISTRACTION in 2004. In 2010, Drawn & Quarterly published The Selves .

Ahlers' art has been exhibited across Canada, as well as in the United States, Japan, and Australia. She helped create the visual identity of Rookie Mag and from 2011 to 2015 was a frequent contributor to the publication and lead artist/designer of its four anthologies.

Sonja Ahlers' profile page