A Dreaded Sunny Day:

I was in the room when my father died. I'd spent the night with him at the hospital. He was dying from prostate cancer and he looked the way cancer patients do: too pale, too thin, eyes unfocused. He was a man becoming a ghost.

He dozed, but I couldn't sleep. I was afraid he wouldn't make it through the night. So, when morning finally came, I let myself lie down on the cot beside his bed. I curled up on my side facing him and I shut my eyes. Only minutes later I startled awake. My father lay peacefully against the pillow, his hands folded like a man playacting death in a coffin. I watched him, waiting for his chest to rise. It never did. I didn't really expect it to.

I knew then, as I know now, that he waited for me to lie down beside him, that his soul leaving the room was the sound that woke me. And if you don't believe in souls, then say it was his silence, the absence of sound, the finality of his stillness that made me open my eyes to what was now his corpse.

My dad had been sick for many years, so I should have been prepared for his death. But anyone who has been through a fight with cancer knows the one thing you can't kill is hope—for a little more time, for a new drug, for more time so that you can find a new drug. Even so, there's a point when everything abstract becomes concrete and where the disaster takes on momentum. You watch the person you love deteriorate like a time lapse video, the petals curl, the bloom collapses.

Despite all the time I had to contemplate my father's death, I still wasn't ready for it, and I made a lot of terrible decisions in the months after he died—quit my job, doubled down on a dangerous relationship, spent far too many nights wasted at Bar Sinister.

Sure, grief has to be acknowledged and discussed. But the problem is grief fights dirty. It will shake your hand, tell you, "Well fought!" and pretend to go to its corner in defeat. You think the battle is over, then two weeks or two months later, grief is back with a sucker punch and you find yourself sobbing in a Panda Express parking lot.

It's been nearly twenty years since I lost my dad. I learned to manage my depression, got out of that garbage relationship, landed my dream job and fought to get good at it. I've found lots of ways to talk about grief in my work. In Hellie. In Matthias. When Zoya notes that grief and love are one and the same, that grief is the shadow love leaves when it is gone. But I knew I was still dancing around death instead of inviting it out onto the floor. For years I poked at the idea of a book about grief, and I came up with some pretty words and some solemn thoughts. I just couldn't find my way into an actual story.

Then John Picacio knocked on my door. I met John at a Worldcon in 2011, when I'd sold my first novel, but I was still almost a year out from publication. I was told to go to a party and "network," so I was doing what I do best: standing awkwardly against a wall with a drink in my hand, trying to work up the courage to talk to strangers. A friend from the GRRM fandom was kind enough to introduce me to John. I told him I was a fan, and how much I loved the illustration he'd done of Bran, perched atop the gargoyles of Winterfell.

John was an absolute superstar at that con and he could have said "thank you" and moved on to all of the famous and interesting people who wanted to talk to him. Instead he sat with me and chatted about books and art. I told him I'd just received possible cover comps for my debut novel and he asked to see them, and then he really dug in on what he liked and didn't like. These days a lot of people are nice to me at parties (though I still tend to cling to the walls). John was kind to me before I ever sold a single book, before I hit the NYT list, before Netflix ever came calling. We stayed in touch. We supported each other's projects. When the business got frustrating, we cheered each other on.

Even so, when John came to me and said, "I have an idea for a book we should write together," my walls went up. I have been pitched many such projects in many unpleasant situations—the doctor in a Las Vegas hospital who told me he had a brilliant idea for a novel comes to mind. (He offered to split the profits 50/50 but I was more concerned about the literal hole in my intestines at the time. Short-sighted, I know.) Then John said, "It's the Wizard of Oz set in a graveyard." Suddenly I was paying attention.

He wanted to tell the story of a girl separated from her family on Día de Muertos and the four horsemen she meets, the last of whom is Death. As he spoke, I saw the shape of the story we would tell, one that would honor the fear and sadness that come with loss, but that would take us on an adventure too. John threw open the cemetery gates—and a girl named Cala was waiting.

Cala realized a fourth rider had been with them all along.

Now he emerged from the whispering leaves of the trees. He wore a cloak of gleaming crow feathers, and his horse was larger than all the others, its coat glowing pale as moonlight. “I’m glad you came to my party,” he said. “Please don’t be afraid. You’ve met me before.”

There's a burst of activity around death—a mess of distracting logistics and chores, a tide of condolences. Then there's silence, the same terrible quiet that filled that hospital room and woke me from sleep. So, how do we speak into that silence? How do we name our fears and our sadness without feeling like we're burdening our friends? How do we support the people we love when we have our own pain to carry? Grief is lonely, even when the people around us are grieving too.

I can't pretend this book is an answer to those questions, but I hope it's a decent place to start. It's spooky and strange. It's for anyone who has ever experienced loss. It's for families and found families trying to find a way to talk about sorrow. It's for kids like me who spent a lot of time in graveyards reading epitaphs, who didn't quite feel safe among the living. And if you saw yourself in Alex's loneliness or Kaz's secret hunger to connect, maybe it's for you too.

The gate to the cemetery creaked on its hinges, and its high voice said, “The party is starting.”

“I still don’t want to go,” said Cala. But she didn’t say it very loudly. She didn’t want anyone to know she was afraid.

So dark-eyed Cala went to walk among the graves.

The Invisible Parade is now available for preorder. I hope you'll meet me at the cemetery gates.

Signed copies are available at these independent bookstores.

Join me and John on tour.