Coming 6/27/26: When You're Dead and Gone

If you follow me on social media, then you already know that I'm releasing a new book this year, entitled When You're Dead and Gone. I've also spoken about the fact that this book centers around grief and addiction recovery. I wanted to take the opportunity of my blog to give you all a more long-form explanation of this story, which will count as the first adult book that I have published.

The idea for this book was initially far more frivolous than the book ended up being. I found some old art of one of the POV characters, Vanya, from 2010. On the back of two different drawings, I found short snippets of writing. These snippets center on Vanya, a goth girl, being bullied by Caleb, a boy that she was actively sleeping with but who was unkind to her. He is also one of the WYDAG POV characters. The gears immediately started turning: What if I wrote out the rest of Vanya and Caleb's story, but updated it?

So I did. First, I decided that Vanya was transgender. Second, I knew I needed an explanation for why Caleb would be a total cunt and make it somehow solvable.

Thus came the surprise premise of When You're Dead and Gone: In the prologue of this book, Caleb's older brother overdoses on fentanyl, less than a month before his eighteenth birthday. At the start, this was simply an explanation for why Caleb Winters is angry and thoughtless. This start lasted about twelve to fifteen hours, approximately. I wrote the prologue and Lane Winters' death on the night of January 20, 2025. I woke up on the morning of January 21, 2025 to learn that one of my students, a week after his seventeenth birthday, had overdosed and died.

The original intent of the manuscript was that it should be a deeply emotional romance between Caleb and Vanya. It is a deeply emotional romance between Caleb and Vanya, but it is so much more than that. It became an anthem to the different ways grief can manifest, to the non-linear struggle of recovery from substance abuse, to what trauma comes with leading the lives that these young people have led. I drew inspiration from the stories that students have told me. I wanted to depict the reality of being a young person who's been addicted to things only spoken of in a whisper. I wanted to say the quiet part out loud.

When You're Dead and Gone is a walking trigger warning for this reason. I did not pull punches, and with it I offer the honesty that has been offered to me. However, I tried to lay out these realities with a twist of morbid humor, because that is one of the most common aspects I see in the recovery of young people. Sometimes to their detriment. Come on, guys.

How do I take these characters where they need to go? It's a journey, quite literally. Lane Winters' boyfriend, Kieran, steals his ashes and takes his urn on a trip across the western United States, a trip that they promised each other they would take together. Caleb, Vanya, and their friends Jinx and Opal chase after him on the unplanned roadtrip of a lifetime.

I explained this premise once in front of someone I knew well who had asked what it was about, and someone I did not know at all, who happened to be standing there. When I finished my summary, this person that I did not know spoke first: "Oh, yeah, roadtrips are a common trope." Obviously I have not forgotten that this was said, especially as that's not what the word trope means, but sure, maybe it's common. People have written about roadtrips for a long time, especially if we simply take books about traveling characters (regardless of vehicle) into account. What I can say of this roadtrip book is that you will not find characters like these anywhere else. These are human beings born of a keyboard but humans nonetheless, outcasts and beggars and lovers desperate to find their place in the world, a place in a world without someone they loved furiously.

How hollow the world is when you lose someone that you love. How strange it is to wake up without the shape of them inside of it. How much you took for granted, believing that tomorrow you would see them again. Your arms will reach for someone who isn't there. You will hug empty space and wonder if somewhere in the cosmos your lost being knows that you tried to embrace them.

This book is for anyone who has fucked up, anyone who has loved someone who isn't here anymore, and anyone who wants to understand their stories. This book is romance in the dark, love shattered on the floor, brains and bodies beaten, and the stars you see in empty space.

I hope to see you on June 27, 2026.

And to those of you struggling as I write: Your story isn't over yet.