Nocturne

Casting Shadows The First Chapter

Lately, I feel as though I’ve been living between two worlds.

One is soft and breathing and earthly. Made of motherhood, quiet rooms, homeschooling littles, and the tender, bone-deep exhaustion of caring for my older daughter as she recovers from a major surgery. The other world lives somewhere more fragile, more fevered, inside my mind, where the characters in my new book, Casting Shadows, have threaded themselves through my heart and refused to loosen their hold.

This book is not a sequel… but it is haunted. Echoes linger in its bones. In whispered names. In familiar patterns. In the slow ritual of coffee poured late at night. If you’ve read my first novel, you may feel the ghost of it brush past your shoulder. If you haven’t, this story was written to stand alone. The shadows will find you either way.

I’m about halfway through writing now, and it felt only right to let my paid subscribers meet Maren in her raw, unpolished, softly wounded existence. I hope you fall a little in love with her and I hope she lingers with you long after you’ve stopped reading.

With love,

Mel

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