Aero is a stranger in his own skin, if you can still call it skin. His body is heavier, stronger, and faster than it should be, and he doesn’t trust any of it. He knows how to do things he can’t remember learning, and he flinches at memories that don’t feel like his. Part of him is desperate to know who he was. The other part suspects there’s a reason he was made to forget.

Lyra lost her parents to overdoses as a teenager and was sent to live with her grandmother in The Root, a place where most people either die or disappear. Against all odds, she clawed her way to a scholarship at Alacran University, then spent years too angry at the hand she was dealt to use it. She’s stubborn, calculating, and wickedly funny in the driest way possible. Like obsidian, she’s beautiful, sharp, and has a way of showing you your own flaws.

The main character started out named Orion. However, I changed his name because of an idea that popped into my head and I needed his name to fit the A-to-Z generation naming in a companion series set 300 years later.

Ash and Alloy is planned as a trilogy, and a companion series is in the works (aka my brain) to pick up 300 years in the future.

After a late-night binge of one of my favorite anime shows (cyborg sidekick character, obviously), I had a dream so vivid I woke up and wrote down every detail I could remember. The second it was socially acceptable to call someone, I called one of my best friends and dumped the whole thing on him. His response: “DUDE! Please write this!” So I did.

As the firstborn, Wren saw the worst of Ramona’s chaos, including things no child should ever have to see. She’s sworn off having kids of her own, and the life she’s built is comfortable in the only way she knows: messy. She paints, writes résumés for strangers, and sometimes lets a questionable night or two cover the bills, which barely dents her debt. Dry, quick-witted, and a Libra to her core, she’ll argue any side of a fight. She just won’t trust anyone in it.

Vera was the golden child, until she wasn’t. Her addiction made her the family’s worst nightmare: she stole from everyone, and used them just the same. Now eleven years sober, she’s a supervising psychologist at a rehab center, married with three kids and a house in Huntington Beach. She earned every bit of it, and she’ll make sure you know it. Behind the confidence, she’s quietly drowning in life and fixing everything she can, terrified of ending up like her mother.

Her sisters took the brunt of Ramona’s storms to protect her, then took the rest out on her. Valerie grew up spoiled, beautiful, and mean when cornered. She’s smart enough to do anything, but she falls hard for a new obsession and drops it before it gets serious. Her taste in men is no better: three kids, three fathers, each one a project she was sure she could fix. Blunt, flighty, and a bit of an oddball, she plays tough so no one gets close enough to hurt her.

Ramona’s own mother never wanted her. At twelve, she hitchhiked from Maryland to California and learned to survive in a world no child should know, numbing it with whatever she could find. She got sober once, long enough to win back her firstborn, then lost herself again. When she was good, she was magic: camping trips, sleepovers, dance parties, concerts, and her last dime spent on whatever her girls wanted. When she wasn’t, she was a wrecking ball. Every daughter got a different version of Ramona, and now they have to decide which one to bury.

Vera and Valerie share a V initial on purpose. It mirrors the naming pattern of my own sisters.

I tend to be a very messy writer on purpose. Scenes pop up in the shower, in a dream, while watching a TV show and unwinding, they honestly hit everywhere and these characters are the type of characters to either throat punch me or ghost me and there’s no in between on this story.

Underneath the dark humor, it’s about loyalty: sisters who don’t always get along, but always show up for each other. Fiercely. Unapologetically. Against everything else. They always show up.

Stopped at a red light on my way to pick up my son from school, I slipped into a daydream so terrifying I couldn’t move, until the car behind me honked. It stayed with me for days, and it took a long time before I could bring myself to write it down. But I did, and now it’s yours to read.

After my youngest was born, one fear followed me everywhere: what if the house caught fire and I couldn’t get everyone out in time? It brought me to tears more times than I can count, until my husband and I sat down and made an actual escape plan. (He also pointed out that we live two doors from a fire station. They could practically hose us down from their front steps.)

Our house has an open second-story landing over a tile floor. After my son was born, I couldn’t stop picturing myself tripping at the top of the stairs with him in my arms. Some days the thought was so loud it nearly froze me in place.

This collection grew out of some of the most intense, emotionally devastating moments of my life: the intrusive thoughts and vivid dreams that came with postpartum depression. Every story started there.

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