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Release Day: A Light After Leaving Is Here

 Today’s the day.

The quiet, aching kind of day.
The kind that smells like pine cleaner and faint disappointment.
The kind that feels like a heart whispering: “Please see me.”

I'm beyond proud (and terrified, let’s be honest) to share my newest release with you:


✨ A Light After Leaving: Five Stories About the Fears We Never Say Out Loud

Out now wherever souls get cracked open.

This collection is for anyone who's ever stared at the ceiling in the dark and wondered if love is still love when it forgets to say your name. It’s for the ones who carry unspoken grief like a second skin. For anyone who’s ever felt like the side quest in their own life.

These aren’t tales of villains and heroes.
They’re stories of survival in soft clothes.
Of love that wants to be enough.
Of fear that shapes us more than we admit.

Set in the vibrant yet secret-shadowed cities of Aria, A Light After Leaving holds five emotionally raw stories that tug at the invisible threads in marriage, motherhood, memory, and identity. It’s intimate, lyrical, feminine—and not afraid of silence.

📖 In this collection, you’ll find:

  • Marin Reclaimed – A woman slowly disappears inside a life that looks good on paper, until she learns to claim space again.

  • The Clay Womb – A mother haunted by PTSD and the uncanny. Rural, raw, and quietly surreal.

  • Where the Sky Breaks Blue – A queer coming-of-age love story wrapped in the fear of growing apart.

  • The Space Between the Rooms – Childfree. Unspoken. A marriage that forgot how to speak love aloud.

  • When the Mother Isn’t Looking – A pregnant woman sees the past in her future—and fears who she might become.

These aren’t "plot twist" stories. These are "I feel seen" stories. If you vibe with josei manga, literary fiction that knows how to bleed pretty, or emotionally complex character studies, this book was written for you.

🌒 Excerpt: Marin Reclaimed

The living room smelled like pine cleaner and faint disappointment.
A February chill scratched at the windowpane, and Marin sat cross-legged on the rug, folding the same stack of laundry she’d folded the day before. Or maybe the day before that. In this house, time didn’t pass—it circled like drain water, slow and reluctant...

Marin’s story might be the one that hits closest to the chest. She’s the elf healer in an RPG party that never checks her HP. A woman who gave and gave until she wasn’t in the pictures anymore—literally. She’s who you think about when you realize silence can be deafening. And that love can still hurt even when no one's trying to.

💬 A Few Things I’d Love From You:

  • If the stories spoke to you, leave a review—on Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever. Reviews are soul-sustaining spells for indie authors like me. 💛

  • Tell a friend. Or an ex. (Especially the ones who turned your love into background noise.)

  • Follow me for moody vibes and story updates:

Thank you for reading. For feeling. For holding space for soft hurts and sharp truths.

Here's to all the versions of you that never got a goodbye.
Here's to the light that comes after leaving.
It may be dim, but it’s real.
And it’s yours.

— Seraphine Vale🌑
(a.k.a. the ghost in your literary mirror)

Available Now:

🛒 Buy the Book Here:

No matter your favorite platform, A Light After Leaving is waiting for you:

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