Ashes to Dust
Season One List & Season Two Teaser
Ashes to Dust is a dark romantasy revenge tale based on the story of Cinderella. It answers a very simple question: What if Cinderella didn’t need a fairy godmother or a handsome prince to save the day. What if she could handle it all herself.
Also, all the trigger warnings! All of them.
I can’t say where I originally got this idea because it’s lost to time, but it wasn’t that long ago that something sparked questions: “What if Cinderella didn’t just submit to everything that was happening to her? What if she instead took matters into her own hands? What if this was a revenge story?”
Oooh! I just had that idea one day, and then I had to know.
What if this was a revenge story? What if there was no fairy godmother? What if the prince was that charming? How would that work?
It started off like a lot of my story ideas — not fully-formed, and me just a little unsure. Cinderella — or as she’s known in the story, Ash — is living in a modern-ish world, sort of half-classic fairy tale and half something else. That something else was never really defined, and as I kept writing, most of the “modern” effects of the story fell away, leaving more of a traditional story behind — only as twisted as possible.
And when I say “all the trigger warnings,” I mean it. And not because the story is horribly graphic — it’s not. I specifically wrote it in this lyrical way so that a lot of what is happening is implied or the blows are softened. But, trigger warnings? Like rape, non-consensual sex, drug use, manipulation, sadomasochism, non-consensual body modification, orgy, and (the most tame of all) pure, unadulterated murder — all of it there in measured doses in seven tight episodes.
What would Cinderella do if she didn’t wait for a fairy godmother and a handsome prince, plus a handful of very skilled mice? Well, I think she might do this.
Welcome to Ashes to Dust!
Season Two
Now, let’s talk about what’s next, shall we?
Suffice to say that Cinderella, or Ash, makes it through to the end, but is it the end? No. And why should it be? I realized as I neared the end of this set of chapters that, in fact, the story is not actually over. And the more I thought about where this story should or could go, the more I realized there are actually two more seasons to go.
Why?
Because there are bigger issues afoot and more names on Ash’s list, which you will come to understand as you read Season One and then Season Two later this year.
In the meantime, if you are one of my readers who’s already read Season One, allow m to tease you with an excerpt from Season Two.
Teaser
The sky flashed, and I turned. There it was. Up into the clouds a single spire soaring, raging against the storm. Rain struck my cheeks — cool and welcome, and for a moment, I could not tell it from tears.
It was there. I knew it when I saw it. There. Before.
Before Delilah. Before her treachery, her betrayal. Before her smooth words and hard iron chains. Before the dust came to me, singing. A spell. A drought. A solution. Before they offered three moons of silver for a whore. Before I understood what men built in places like this, where the world was theirs alone and no one answered for the horror. Before I watched the prince fall to his knees clutching at the one thing, the object that made him a king. Lost. Bloody. Screaming. His eyes locked on mine, accusing, cursing, and something else I thought I saw there.
Fear.
Thunder rippled overhead, and the hiss of the rain filled in behind it like a river rushing down from the heavens. Thorn, the creature, huddled under a cloak of rough wool, leaned in. I stroked her cheek, felt her cold fingers clasp around mine. I wiped my eyes and wiped away the memory of his. All he was now was ashes.
Ashes and dust.
The prince was already dust.
The Baron simply had not learned it yet.
Season Two coming in late 2026!