For My Early Readers ✨

 

 

✨ Preorder Bonus: A Glimpse at What Comes Next

As a thank-you for preordering The Root Beneath, you’re receiving an early look at the next chapter in this unfolding legacy: the preface of my upcoming novel, And What Remains.

This story continues the threads of grief, love, and survival — but from a different vantage point. It’s raw and aching, a reflection on what we carry after everything changes… and what still finds a way to bloom.

This preface is yours, early — before anyone else reads it. Just a soft reminder that you’re part of something sacred and unfolding.

Thank you for being here. ✨🤍

Preface

The Moon is full and high in the sky, the bright light of her rays beaming over the city lights as the thrum of jazz music vibrates through the city streets and mingles with the sound of hundreds of intoxicating voices.

The sound carries to me here, on the patio of The Black Dahlia, my favorite downtown New Orleans bar, invigorating all my senses.

The energy wafting from the planet above and the swarms of drunk people outside send fresh waves of new life through me as my body continues to glide, wild abandon moving me through the empty spaces of the outdoor dance floor.

My hair flies in waves as I spin, jump, and twist, moving my body freely, lifting my green chiffon skirt with my hands to allow for some cool air to brush the sensitive skin of my upper thighs.

It’s night, but the dense New Orleans air sticks to my skin along with my sweat; beads dripping down my heaving chest.

It’s almost as if my heart was born aching for this sort of freedom, athirst for the call of Jazz and Soul.

I don’t remember a time I was this unbound.

So alive.

So very alive; this sort of emancipation feeling so much like heaven, if I could not feel my pulse beating underneath my charmingly tanned skin, I would think I was dead.

The people around me are a blur of movement as I continue to dance and thrash, in part from my transposing around the dance floor, but from the alcohol making itself at home inside my racing bloodstream.

The song speeds up then slows, and as I gentle the grinding of my body to fit the change, the wind sends a shift of energy to me that makes goose pimples pop up across my exposed flesh.

That’s exactly when I see it.

Black curly hair a little muddled from sweat and humidity, stirring with the wind, and a set of bright hazel eyes as wild as a whole damn forest.

Nowhere to run or escape now.

I’d known New Orleans was haunted when I arrived, but no one prepares you for what to do when the ghosts follow you home.

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