The Crossing

My eighth book (or so, I've lost count, honestly).

 

After I had my first baby, there were a lot of emotions. There’s nothing more wonderful and horrible than breaking your heart in two and seeing it in a little tiny thing so helpless and perfect and vulnerable.

 

I struggled with dark feelings and thoughts I had never faced. I realized how isolated, sad, and miserable I was in some parts of myself. I came to wonder: what if I loved myself, truly loved myself, exactly as I was. Completely. And that became the beating heart of the Crossing.

 

The banner of the book is: what if you died and found you were on a ship to the afterlife with your murderer? This was the vessel I would use to carry that beating heart.

 

And so Evelyn and her story were born.

 

I crafted a dark world of mysterious, sickly water and dense fog hiding a ghost ship of dreams and nightmares. I brought monsters out of the deep and stashed secrets away in elegant ballrooms and luxurious sitting room cigar boxes. I hid my metaphors in dazzling jewels and that wretched elevator that goes down, down, down to the depths of the Auratus’ hellish hull.

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But my beating heart beat in more than just Evelyn. It beats in Robert, my swarthy, misunderstood leading man who could never forgive his own crimes. It beats in Annabelle and Lewis, the servants who power the story from inside out, wondering if there will ever be a future for them beyond the endless toil.

 

And beyond that beating heart is a message, a warning: Inequality is death to us all.