I learned early how to survive quietly. Keep my head down. Say the right things. Wait to Fade at age 24 like everyone else. I believed in it. I was ready to disappear.
Then Parker starts asking dangerous questions about the Fadings. I know better than to listen. Curiosity gets people noticed.
But when my best friend, Layla, becomes a Gardner, everything changes. She comes back willing to lie for a system she refuses to explain. And suddenly, obedience doesn’t feel safe anymore.
The truth is buried deep in this world, protected by silence and fear. It’s the same truth that stole Layla from me.
If I want her back, I’ll have to stop pretending I don’t see what’s wrong.
And once I start asking the right questions, this world won’t let me Fade quietly.
I describe my novel as a mix of science-fiction, dystopia, and fantasy. It doesn't fit in a box, and I love that about it.
I hope the journey of these two characters who explore love, friendship, and ikigai, inspire and empower you to stand up for a life you want to lead.
As someone who’s always loved dystopian tales like The Giver or movies like Monsters Inc. and Toy Story that reimagine the origins of everyday things, I felt an urge to create a world that worked the same way. One explanation led to another, and in trying to make sense of my own imagined phenomena, I built a world entirely different from what I first envisioned.
Even though I loved reading, I never thought I could write a book. Authors always seemed too brilliant. They were able to weave threads together with clever, satisfying reveals I couldn’t imagine pulling off myself.
Still, the idea lingered. Between my science classes and research lab hours as an undergraduate, I’d jot down bits and pieces whenever inspiration hit. Then I saw the posting: Writing the Novel, taught by Dr. Joseph Scapellato at my university. I thought, This could be my chance to really take a shot at it. Having a class, some kind of structure, gave me confidence.
I wrote the first fifty pages of my novel in that class and continued to write into my senior year. And then I put it down for a long time.
It wasn’t until the end of my first year in my PhD program that I decided to pick it back up. I had been procrastinating for ages, feeling the weight of the momentum I’d lost.
It took two dedicated years of meeting every three weeks, each time with the goal of finishing at least one chapter. Those meetings were with another PhD student, Francisco Torres‑Torres, who I’d convinced to write a book too. Eventually, my husband joined us—someone else I (coincidentally) convinced to start his own novel.
I am proud to say that in May 2024, I completed my first full draft at 85k words. An idea that sparked 5 years prior to that, finally seen through. Draft 2 is going through a complete rewrite, with the goal of having a polished version by the end of 2026.