Urban Fantasy · Ancient Languages · Hidden Histories
Some languages carry more than meaning. Some losses leave marks that never quite heal. And some people, when they finally find each other, become the thing they were both surviving toward.
Shawn · Author
The author
I'm Shawn — an urban fantasy writer based in Oklahoma. My debut novel is about a neurodivergent non-binary linguist who loses almost everything and discovers, on the other side of that loss, that she was right about things the world told her were impossible.
It is a book about grief. About suicide and the impossible weight it leaves on the people who loved that person. About loving someone who hurt you and understanding, eventually, why — without erasing what they did. About the specific devastation of losing an autistic safe person. About polyamory done honestly. About a found family built from witches, werewolves, vampires, and Vodou practitioners — every kind of person the world decided didn't belong.
At its center is a love story between two people who had both stopped believing they were allowed to want something like this. It is, underneath all the linguistics and the supernatural and the mystery, a book about healing. About what happens when someone finally sees all of you.
Creole linguistics. Vodou ceremony. Hoodoo tradition. West African oral history. The protagonist's expertise becomes the key to a truth that academia spent centuries misreading because it was encoded in traditions academia refused to take seriously.
Suicide. Grief. Loving someone who caused harm and understanding them anyway. The compounding losses that strip a person down to what they actually are. This book does not look away from any of it.
The mystery is real. The supernatural stakes are real. But the engine is emotional: a neurodivergent, queer, polyamorous woman learning slowly, painfully, beautifully that she is allowed to be loved exactly as she is.
Debut Novel
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