Crash//Burn//Rise is the most personal book I’ve ever written for this world, and it has taken years of music, late-night rewrites, and a very stubborn redheaded bassist to get here. It is planned for release later this year, and it finally feels like the kind of story that was always supposed to exist: messy, tender, and loud in all the right ways.
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Why this story matters
This book started as a question that wouldn’t let go: what happens when someone who keeps crashing finally meets someone who refuses to walk away from the wreckage. Ryan has always been that person for this universe – the bass player who pours too much of himself into every note and then has to live with the fallout. Michaela, the doctor who knows exactly how fragile a human body (and heart) can be, has always been his opposite and his mirror at the same time.
Underneath the stage lights, beyond the tour buses, and guitar feedback, this is a story about stubbornness, second chances, and the quiet ways love asks you to stay when running would be easier. It is also, very simply, about two people who keep choosing each other even when it would be safer not to.
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Writing through the crash and burn
This book has followed through different seasons of life-scribbled between shifts, drafted on tired evenings, and reshaped every time these characters surprised their creator. Some scenes were written with Def Leppard and Savage Garden on repeat, because certain songs still feel like they were written for Ryan and Michaela’s hearts specifically.
There were drafts that felt too safe, versions where the characters did not quite earn their rise, and those had to be torn apart and rebuilt. Letting them be flawed-diabetic, anxious, angry, soft, guilty, hopeful-has been the hardest and most honest part of the process.
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What readers can expect
Readers can expect a slow burn that has already been smouldering for years, finally getting the oxygen it needs to ignite. There is cinnamon-roll-heart chaos on one side and goth, steel-spined tenderness on the other, and somewhere between those two poles is the love story.
There will be hospital corridors and backstage hallways, quiet kitchen scenes at 2 a.m., and city lights blurring outside car windows while two redheads try to decide if choosing each other is worth the risk. There will be music threaded through everything, because these characters have always been louder and more honest when a song is playing in the background.
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Walking toward the rise
*Crash//Burn//Rise* is planned to land later this year, and there is a mix of terror and gratitude in typing that sentence. Letting this book go means admitting that Ryan and Michaela are ready to belong to readers too- not just the person who carried them around in a head and a hard drive for so long.
Over the next few months, there will be more to share: snippets, playlists, maybe even a few behind-the-scenes thoughts about the scenes that hurt the most to write over on ko-fi or maybe Patreon. For now, it is enough to say this: if your heart has ever been broken and you still secretly believe in rising anyway, this story was written with you in mind.
Until next time!