Brann J. Williams

There's a city in the hot part of the South, built over a debt older than anyone in it. Two families have kept watch a long time. The Beathornes hunt, and keep the ledgers. The Morrows are witches, and read what the ledgers can't hold. Whatever's underneath the streets has always been willing to wait. It isn't waiting anymore. Something the oldest book warned about is moving again, and a debt somebody signed generations back is about to come due.

Book one of an ongoing Southern Gothic series about family, oaths, and what the past decides you owe it. In development.

Will Thorne hears an angel and a demon. The angel comes in daylight, out in the ward's dayroom, warm and easy to trust. The demon stays in the shadows and never shows more than its face. Will landed here after his wife died in a fire he couldn't stop. He can't remember all of that night. What he does remember, he said out loud to the wrong people, and now everyone's sure he's sick.

The two voices never agree. They also never speak at the same time, so Will can't catch either one in the lie. And the longer he's on the ward, the more they start to switch places. It's a book about grief, and guilt, and how much it wrecks a person to live inside a reality nobody else can check. Mostly it's about a man trying to stay himself, while the kindest voice in the room keeps a set of keys behind its back.