On Dreams & Nightmares
A Book Deal; A Death
On January 17, my debut novel was finally announced on Publishers Marketplace.
Days later, my mother died.
I am living my wildest dream and my worst nightmare, and it’s happening at the same time.
THE HALLS OF THE DEAD is a revenge story motivated by centuries of love, devotion, and grief. In this world, necromancy is both a kind of magic and a religious tradition: necromancers are turned into sentient grimoires when they die, who then teach the next generations the magic they knew when they lived. Necromancy is the art of saying no—no, I won't let you go; no, I won't let you be destroyed—but despite this defiance, these books are burned, and necromancers face execution.
When I told my mother I’d written a gothic, gory, dark fantasy novel about a woman who uses forbidden magic to bring her lover back from the dead, she immediately said “Please don’t make me read it.” My mom enjoyed women’s fiction, contemporary romance, Nicholas Sparks and The Bridges of Madison County—whereas, according to her, I’d “always loved that… dark stuff.”
In case it wasn’t clear, my mom did not like the dark stuff. (And yet, she loved The Hunger Games?) She loved a happy ending. She loved romcoms. She loved stories about people falling in love—and eyed me with distrust and suspicion when I said my novel lived in the same genre as The Phantom of the Opera. “You like gore,” she reminded me, apparently forgetting people are hanged on stage in the musical. “Phantom is a love story. It’s not gore.”
But last summer, on the day I got the offer, she screamed with joy that I finally had my book deal. Even as she scolded my father for letting me watch The Nightmare Before Christmas (???) and Underworld and Blade (“that vampire crap” that made me a dark fantasy writer, I guess?), she was over the moon that the dream of my life was coming true.
I never told her this, but I wouldn’t have conceived of THE HALLS OF THE DEAD without her.
When the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020, the local newspaper was overwhelmed with obituaries. My mom knew 40 people who died; at that point, the number was so absurdly terrible she stopped counting. Every time she opened the newspaper, someone else she once loved was gone. It’s hard to describe that kind of persistent grief. It’s hard to describe the gray fog we lived in.
I wanted to undo it. I wanted a magic word that could make it all go away. That magic word doesn’t exist in our world, so I made a world where it did. A world where your pain and your blood and the right words, in the right order, can make a miracle happen.
On page one of THE HALLS OF THE DEAD, you’ll meet Irene Shallcross Haley, who’s been secretly collecting necromantic grimoires since her childhood. She’ll introduce herself to you by slamming a knife through her hand to cast a spell that will bring her lover, executed by the state for being a necromancer, back from the dead.
On the day my mother died, I understood Irene in a way I never had before. Like her, I would have stabbed my hand—would have stabbed my hand a thousand times over—if it meant I could bring her back. I’d have done anything for my mom to have a different ending. I’d have done anything to tell her, just one more time, how much I loved her.
My mom won’t be here for the release of THE HALLS OF THE DEAD. She’ll never know anything about the books I write next. There are so many milestones in my career, and in my personal life, that she will miss. And every step of the way, I will miss her being there.
Last summer, when I told my mom about my book deal, she said, “One day, before I die, will you write a normal book?” and I said, laughing hysterically, “Probably not!”
I may never write what she’d call a “normal” book. But I am a writer at all because she and my father read to me, every night, before I went to bed. They filled my head with stories, then sent me off to college knowing—and supporting—that my only plan in this life was to become a published author.
She lived long enough to see me do it. And for everything she said—that she wouldn’t be able to read it, that she didn’t want to know what it was about, that it was too scary, that she wished I’d write something else—she also looked me in the eye and said, “I’m proud of you.”
THE HALLS OF THE DEAD will release summer 2026. For more frequent teasers, follow me on Instagram. For now? Enjoy this book trailer made by my friend, the incredible Izzy Singer: