Dead Girls Don't Dream out today!
Happy birthday to this weird little book. Dead Girls is the first novel I ever fully drafted, the book that came close to breaking me in revisions, and is now coming out at the end of a very strange year.
In other promo pictures, I’ve added The Wheel of Fortune tarot card — it appears as a motif in the book, and connects to both cycles of nature and cycles of trauma repeating themselves. I went with the death and justice cards instead, which are always on my mind in my writing.
It’s not a spoiler to say that the main character in Dead Girls dies in the first chapter, and things get harder for her after that. Transformation is painful and risky, and it widens all the cracks already present in a system. The illusion of safety and control are lost.
Riley and Madelyn go through hell in this book. They know deeply how unfair the world is. They also know how easy it would be to give up — to say that the world’s unfixable, or that the fixes are too difficult or ask too much of them.
“So many people say life’s not fair, as if that’s just a fact and not something that people actively decide to reinforce.” That makes up the core of who Riley is, and who she fights to become. Death and Justice — we transform ourselves in the hopes of transforming the world.
I am not a big tarot person (and if I’m misinterpreting their meaning SHHHHH), but those are the cards the called to me today. Celebration is hard this week. A lot of people are sad, and this book is not comforting or escapist. It’s cathartic, I hope. It’s definitely angry. And it’s full of love.
So happy birthday, Dead Girls Don’t Dream, biggest problem child of my career, started in 2018 and out in the world six years later. I hope you’re found by the people who need you.
Order signed copies at Astoria Bookshop
Order the audiobook (narrated by Jess Nahikian) through Audible