Cinder

 I love all of my stories. They are all important to me. But this one… this one is special.

On the surface, Cinder, available in the anthology Common Bonds which centers asexual and aromantic relationships, is the story of a princess who isn't interested in romance but still needs rescuing, so she turns to an app that connects princesses with princes for quick rescues, no strings attached. But there's more to it.

It's about a princess escaping her abusive home, learning to save herself, learning about the magic of friendship.

I started writing it around the same time I realized I had to leave home. And I finished it in my new home. It was the first story I finished here.

When I started writing it, I knew it was abuse and I knew I couldn't stay. And I was having feelings and I didn't have a lot of people I could talk to about them because I couldn't risk people knowing and telling her. A lot of these feelings, tiny little details, went into the story.

Like Ashlyn knowing she should be afraid of her stepmother getting angry, but trying so hard not to laugh because it's almost over and her stepmother has no idea. That was me. Listening to my mother make plans for a future I was not going to be a part of, trying to convince me I wanted to do things next month, when I knew I wouldn't be around that long so it wouldn't even matter.

Ironically, my escape went about as smoothly as the one I wrote. There was a plan, and the plan went to hell, but we made the most of it, me and my character. We got through it.

I think the story was finished when I moved here. But it wasn't good. The editing. That happened here, with my new family. With my friends.

At the end, when Ashlyn is in the car and worries that it's all an illusion that's going to come apart at midnight? That was me, too. Driving in the van with the staff members I consider my friends. And it's quiet, but the quiet doesn't mean tension. The quiet means peace. Comfort. Safety.

I had known my new family for a month when I wrote those lines. Already so attached to them that the idea of it all being a magic spell that can't last forever… it terrified me because this was too good to be true.

These people have been my family for almost 2 years now. Sometimes I still have little jolts of panic when we drive past places that look like where I used to live. My brain has not yet fully come to terms with the fact that this is real, it's my happily ever after, and I never have to go back.

Cinder is available in Common Bonds, in digital and paperback!