Ash, Memory, and the Things We Carry in Silence

What If the Door Was Always Open, and We Were Too Afraid to Knock?

There’s something strange about the way ash settles. It drifts through the air like a ghost, lingers in places you thought were safe, clings to windowsills and fence posts and memories. You wipe it away, but it leaves behind a stain.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately.

Memories of an Ash Covered Sky is days away from release. And while the story is fiction, it’s rooted in something painfully real—the Almeda Fire and the emotional wreckage that followed. I didn’t lose a home in the flames, but I lived close enough to breathe in the smoke, to see the sky turn black, to feel the collective weight of loss and confusion that comes when everything familiar is reduced to embers.

I started Memories of an Ash Covered Sky with the Almeda Fire as the backdrop—a chance to write a mystery. But the story became something else entirely. It began with Sky’s father at the center: a fire chief nearing retirement, caught between duty and regret. But as I wrote, Sky’s voice grew louder. Her journey deepened. And the story evolved into one about both—father and daughter, each carrying their own grief, their own guilt, and a complicated shared history.

It turned into a novel about reflection. About the joys and pains of the parent-child relationship. About the messy, beautiful, often unfinished work of trying to understand one another before it's too late.

Sky carries a weight no one sees. A private ache she’s never spoken aloud. She left home young, cut ties with her father, and learned to survive on her own. But coming back, especially in the middle of disaster, means facing not just the destruction around her, but the damage inside her, too.

I connected with Sky more than I expected. Like her, I’ve carried shame before. Not her story

—but the feeling of holding something in so long it starts to shape you. I let go of that shame years ago, but it took time. It took growth. And it took even longer for the story to reveal itself in a way that allowed me to reflect through Sky’s eyes—and, as a not-perfect father myself, to finally put some of those thoughts on paper.

We all carry something. For some, it’s out in the open. For others, it’s buried deep. This book is about what happens when we finally stop running. When the smoke clears and we’re left standing in the ashes, deciding what—if anything—is still worth holding onto.

Thanks for walking this road with me.– Mike