Melissa Skene

writer. stories from a world just beneath the surface. not everything here is imagined.

[melissaskene]

"The shadows felt thicker than they should be.

Heavier.

Like they were listening."


🥀 Casting Shadows.

[melissaskene]

"I don't remember the moment my life was stolen, only the woman who replaced it with lies."

— Elle, If You Know You Know

She said it so calmly. With so much precision.

Elle Sands has had years to find the exact words for what happened to her and this is what she chose first.

[melissaskene]

Secrets from the Vault opens with Elle Sands in Toronto, present day.

She’s living her good life.

A dog. A husband. Maren and Rune.

She writes. She works. She loves again.

Everything is normal.

Until she takes off her horseshoe necklace to shower.

When she comes back

it’s been replaced.

Something else is there.

Something that knows where she lives.

The good life is still there.

It’s just being watched.

[melissaskene]

Elle at age five, traveling through time with beings of light

making a best friend in 1957 who is thirty years older than her:

normal to me.

this is my life now.

Adeline in 1957, befriending a five year old who appears and disappears

who seems to know things she shouldn’t:

this is fine.

I don’t have questions.

she’s my best friend.

the timeline:

not stable.

the friendship is.

[melissaskene]

Things that are normal in Casting Shadows:

a coffee shop that only exists sometimes

a barista who looks at you like he’s been waiting

a five year old who draws your nightmares from memory

a bruise shaped like a hand that isn’t yours

cinnamon that tastes like a secret

Things that are not normal in Casting Shadows:

nothing.

nothing is normal.

Maren is going through it.

[melissaskene]

If You Know You Know begins with a woman unpacking a box she sealed a decade ago.

At the bottom: a gold pen engraved with the Eye of Horus.

A gift from an Atlantean god who told her to write.

So she is.

And this is the opening of the book.

We haven’t even reached the time travel yet.

[melissaskene]

Maren Sands is a paranormal podcast host who does NOT believe in the paranormal and I think that's the funniest and most tragic setup for a protagonist I've ever written.

She interviews people about hauntings and cryptids and things that go bump in the night and she is so professionally skeptical about all of it...

and then she walks into a coffee shop that disappears.

[melissaskene]

Some things only work if you believe in them.

this wasn’t one of those things.

[melissaskene]

the countess did not think of herself as a villain.

she thought of herself as someone who made impossible choices under impossible circumstances and did not have the luxury of falling apart afterward.

she was not entirely wrong. she was not entirely right.

that's the part that keeps you up at night.

Secrets From The Vault.

[melissaskene]

things that are true about elle:

she makes coffee the same way every morning. cup. grounds. press.

she built a life so ordinary it feels like armour

she thought she escaped

she was not entirely wrong

she was not entirely right

Secrets From The Vault.

coming soon.

[melissaskene]

the countess, on love:

"I did not fall out of love with him. That would have been merciful."

she knew what it felt like. she chose something else. she never forgave herself for it. she never said so. until now.

Secrets From The Vault.

[melissaskene]

she started a document to track what was happening to her.

then the person she was documenting started writing back.

Secrets From The Vault. coming soon.

[melissaskene]

Sacred things, when protected properly, are dangerous.

[melissaskene]

Every deal leaves a mark. Every threshold asks for something in return.

Maren saves herself. Except salvation has fine print.

Casting Shadows out now. 🥀

[melissaskene]

"She told me the world would hurt me. She never said it would start with her."

If You Know You Know. A girl raised by a mystic who claimed to love her. 

A mother wound written in dark fantasy.

[melissaskene]

maybe the point was never to keep them.

maybe the point was who you became after they reminded you what it feels like to feel again.

there’s something devastatingly beautiful about realizing a person was never the destination… just the awakening.

[melissaskene]

I asked her if it was dangerous.

she said, “only if you pretend it isn’t.”