Stories for every different note.
Novels, short fiction, and musicals about kids who don’t fit the mold, chosen families, and minds that see the world a little differently. Some are ready to read today. Others are still on their way.
Read it now
Free to read, because no reader should be priced out of a story that might show them themselves.
Celestial Symphony
The Xyrellian Chronicles · Cosmic Awakening, Book One
In the year 2045, the world is unraveling. And in an ordinary Ohio farmhouse, thirteen-year-old Mik Chen feels like the wrong note in someone else’s song. Mik isn’t a boy. Isn’t a girl. Isn’t sure the world has left any room for what they actually are. But when they look up at the stars, the ache goes quiet, and out there in the dark, something is finally looking back.
Told through the eyes of students in 2065 studying the events that reshaped humanity forever, Celestial Symphony weaves cosmic mystery, tender self-discovery, and the stubborn, defiant power of hope. It’s a story for everyone who has ever felt like they didn’t belong, and dared to wonder if difference might be the most important thing about them.
Cybernetic Friday
A novella in eleven chapters
A human and an artificial mind wake up living in each other’s worlds. The human is neurodivergent, queer, pangender, and long acquainted with pain, and the mind is learning what a body costs. Funny where you least expect it, tender where it counts.
Read the chapters →Cold Comfort
A short story · a coming-out
At 2:47 in the morning, two beings who have spent their whole lives pretending finally stop. One is human and one is not, both trembling, both true. Small enough to read in one sitting, and large enough to stay with you.
Read it on Medium →The Xyrellian Chronicles
One universe, many ways in, from picture-book age to young adult. If a kid falls in love with one of these stories, there’s a whole world waiting for them.
Minds of Change
Cosmic Awakening, Book Two
Mik’s story continues. The questions Celestial Symphony opened begin, slowly, to answer themselves.
Song of the Stars
Cosmic Awakening, Book Three
The book that completes the trilogy, and the note the whole symphony has been building toward.
Alien Academy
Cousins from the Cosmos · middle grade
Cayde has two hearts, two scientist moms, and color-changing skin that gives away every feeling. At the Interspecies Studies Academy, everyone picks something flashy to study. Cayde picks humans, and turns out to be right that there’s something special about us. (And a little bit wrong. You’ll see.)
Quantum Friends
Cousins from the Cosmos · a sister story to Celestial Symphony
The same night the sky sang, told from the other side of the signal. Cayde accidentally connects to Earth’s internet and meets Mik: a first human friend, a secret message across space, and a brave, rule-breaking friendship between two very different worlds.
For the stage
Some stories need to be sung. These librettos are written and waiting for the right composer and collaborators.
Ollie!
A reimagining · a story of becoming
Named carelessly at birth and passed through indifferent hands, a young trans girl moves through a system built to process children rather than protect them, and refuses, at every turn, to disappear. Then she finds the Emerald Door, a theater-shelter of glitter and chosen family, and begins to imagine a life past survival.
The Afterlife of Piper Reilly
A musical comedy for grown audiences
A bureaucratic afterlife run entirely by cats, and a sister who crosses it to set right what was left unfinished between them. Also coming as a novel (see below).
Are you a composer, director, or theater-maker? Let’s talk.
For grown readers
Stories told with more salt, for readers who have already done some of their becoming.
The Afterlife of Piper Reilly
A novel of reconciliation
Wit, heart, and a cat-run afterlife, with more room to breathe than the stage allows. A sister’s journey to make things right, told plainly, with grown-up language.
Contains strong language.
Help these stories find their readers.
Every book we release free reaches a young reader because someone chose to keep the song traveling.
Want an early-reader copy of something still in progress? bethrobin2065@gmail.com