Some stories arrive slowly.
Salt & Sand didn’t.
It began with a single image that appeared in my mind and refused to leave me alone. A girl on a boat. A boy rising from the ocean beside her. That was it at first. No outline. No complete plot. Just a moment that felt alive enough for me to see it playing over and over in my head until eventually I realized I needed to write it down.
That moment became the beginning of something much bigger than I ever expected.
As the story grew, so did the characters. Sierra and Aelion slowly became more than names on a page. They became layered, emotional, flawed, complicated people who carried pieces of fear, longing, strength, trauma, healing, and hope within them. Somewhere along the way, I stopped simply writing about them and started feeling connected to them.
One of the things that mattered deeply to me while creating this world was representation.
Atlantis has always fascinated people because no one truly knows what it was, who its people were, or whether it even existed at all. Most depictions of Atlantis rarely center Black characters, and I wanted to create something different. I wanted Sierra, a Black woman, to exist at the center of this mythical world. Powerful. Desired. Important. Chosen. Not standing on the sidelines of someone else’s story, but fully stepping into her own.
Sierra’s journey is about much more than discovering Atlantis.
It’s about discovering herself.
Throughout the story, Sierra experiences dreams and visions connected to her mother, a woman whose voice she cannot fully hear yet. There’s a reason for that. Sierra isn’t emotionally ready to understand the truth at first. She has to grow into it. She has to accept that she was never abandoned, never unwanted, and never unloved. Everything hidden from her was hidden for a reason tied to her safety and her destiny.
At its heart, Salt & Sand became a story about becoming who you were always meant to be.
The novel changed many times while I was writing it. Early versions leaned heavily into flashbacks and memories before evolving into something more grounded and emotionally connected. Sierra and Aelion eventually became two people who had briefly crossed paths years earlier, carrying a connection neither of them fully forgot. Even after time passed, something about that bond remained unfinished between them.
That emotional pull became one of the strongest parts of the story for me.
I wanted their relationship to feel natural. Magnetic. Real.
Not perfect.
Aelion has flaws. Sierra has scars. Both of them make mistakes. But what mattered to me was their willingness to grow, communicate, acknowledge pain, and fight for something healthier than what they knew before.
For Sierra especially, the story became deeply connected to healing after surviving a toxic relationship. Her journey is about realizing she deserves better. Deserves safety. Deserves love. Deserves respect. And I think many readers, especially women, understand that feeling more than we sometimes admit out loud.
More than anything, I wanted readers to walk away from Salt & Sand feeling hopeful.
I wanted them to remember that no matter how trapped, broken, lost, or uncertain life can feel, there is always a path forward. Sometimes growth begins in the darkest places. Sometimes healing starts the moment you realize your life was always meant to become something greater than your pain.
You are worthy of love.
You are worthy of change.
You are worthy of becoming.
And in many ways, that realization became the true heart of Salt & Sand.
