Of the Stars

by A.M. Alcedo

You must choose: Forsake your darkness or fight for it?

Norah is a nearly thirty burned-out mental health therapist at Corvid’s Hospital. She holds space for others while her own wounds are locked within the spare bedroom of her bequeathed Gothic home.

Uncanny happenstance introduces her to her newest friend and colleague, Dexteras Doe, a gentle, solitary old man. Following a traumatic tragedy decades prior, Dex was left with amnesia, mental illness, and a sense of “fading” from existence. Norah is fascinated by the elder’s otherworldliness while Dex is enamored by the therapist’s resiliency and untold past.

Their friendship and very lives are threatened when they are beckoned to an impossible, underground fight club that promises irresistible prizes in exchange for spilled blood. Hungry for answers about their pasts and about the dark, alluring beings that lurk in the realm’s crimson neon, they step into the ring. As their most hideous selves are exposed, it begs the question: is their connection destined by the alignment of much darker stars?

Of the Stars by A.M. Alcledo is an adult contemporary fantasy with a literary bend about the found-families that teach us to fall in love with healing ourselves, and the found-families best unfounded. It’s for the tired and self aware readers who go to therapy and heal themselves because the generations before them did not. New and established adult audiences will find a home in a father-daughteresque duo, and neurodiverse characters learning to overcome their complex inter-generational curses and create their identities from scratch.

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About the Author

A.M. Alcedo is a licensed therapist with specialty training in trauma recovery. She adores the mental health field, her clients, and is privileged to be a part of their story and vulnerability. Much like Norah Kestrel, A.M. Alcedo has also found healing, hope, and power through her grief, loss, and pain. As a child, she desperately needed a Dexteras Doe in her life, and thus wrote OF THE STARS, to pay homage to her littlest self. This debut novel is written in solidarity for those who have lived in the empty, lonely cove of grief and isolation. For those who have waited in the dark, warming their hands by their tiny, yet fierce fires. This book is to remind them that there are endless coves along the shore occupied by others just like them. They are not alone and they are not forgotten. This book is a love letter to honor them and their stories. Ava Mae Alcedo is a wife to the kindest man in all the galaxy, and a mother to Pancake the calico. She is a lover of Pu-erh tea, anything matcha flavored, birdwatching with binoculars, doodling unicorns, hiking to waterfalls, and getting new tattoos. Above all else, she feels her Purpose is to hold space for the sacred stories of others. Follow her journey via Instagram @writemindedlefthanded