The manuscript is finished. The query letters are flying out. Now, the waiting begins.
Sending a completed book out into the wild is always a surreal experience, but it feels especially fitting for this one. The Shape We Leave has been living in my head for a long time, and I am incredibly proud of what it has become.
For those who have been asking what I’m working on next, I want to pull the curtain back just a little bit.
The Shape We Leave is a seasonal cycle covering the collapse and rebirth of a world. Yes, it takes place in a Z-infected landscape. The dead are walking, the cities are broken, and the danger is constant. But if you have read my work, you know I am less interested in the monsters and far more interested in the people running from them.
This isn’t a story about the gore of the apocalypse; it’s a story about the cost of surviving it.
It explores a brutal question: What is the point of surviving if you lose everything that makes you human in the process? When the infrastructure finally fails and a community team has to make a desperate expedition into the ruins of a dead city just to find critical batteries, the physical threat is obvious. But the psychological threat is heavier. How do leaders like Rhys, Evan, or Lori maintain order without becoming tyrants? What does a nine-year-old girl like Elara see when she looks at a world that only knows spring as a time of thaw and new dangers?
In this world, surviving a bite is only half the battle. The real fight is holding onto your compassion, your logic, and your community when every instinct is screaming at you to look out only for yourself.
The book is currently out on submission. The publishing world moves slowly, but the moment I have news on where The Shape We Leave will find its home, the people on my mailing list will be the absolute first to know.
If you want to follow the publication journey of this manuscript—and get early access to character dossiers, world-building notes, and cover reveals—make sure you are subscribed.
The world has already ended. Now, we find out what’s left.
