The Standing Wave · Book One
Two peoples who have every reason to finish each other meet at a dead star — a cinder throwing off the last of a light that went out long ago — and, against every probability, make a ceasefire. Dark Passage asks the only question that matters once the peace is made: not how it was made, but what holds it. Not trust. Not fear. A third thing — and whether it lasts.
Nobody wants the dead star. It is worth nothing — a remnant, a burnt-out cinder packed heavier than a mind can hold. Which is exactly why two enemies meet there: the only ground two peoples can stand on is the ground neither of them wants. And there, against the odds, they engineer a ceasefire.
The mechanics of how are in the chapters. The question the book is built around is harder, and quieter: once the peace is made, what holds it? Not trust — these two have no reason to trust, and they don't. Not fear — fear starts wars as often as it stops them. A third thing — a kind of restraint kept against one's own nature, in the dark, for reasons neither side would say aloud. The novel calls it, eventually and at great cost, coherence: the condition that lets a structure stand while every part of it pulls away from every other.
The opening movement of a trilogy and its companion, Vel, Dark Passage is science fiction at the scale of deep time — spare, and, until the one moment it must give everything, unwilling to tell you the answer. Sit with the question before you begin.
The book has a companion album — a real release, already on streaming. It scores the story almost beat for beat.
Companion Album · out now
Ten tracks that trace the book's arc — the crossing, the contact, the mirror, the lament, the dead star, the battle, the afterglow, the carried light, the next horizon. Two titles speak the book's deepest notes on their own: The Alien Mirror — the enemy seen to be a mirror, which is coherence itself — and Legacy of Light, the light nearly out and still, somehow, there.
Lead track: "Dark Sun Rising." The dead star is the book's emblem and the album's center.
And a companion show: What Holds, Episode One — The Dark Passage — one deep-time question, audio only, arriving with the book. No spoilers; the answer is never given.
Retailer links for paperback and eBook appear here at launch. Join our reader list to hear the moment the book goes live, or contact us about review copies and interviews.