Welcome to the Other Side of the Wall
What if everything you believed about safety was a lie?
In a near-future America where faith and fear govern every breath, Leonore Fuller has never questioned the walls that protect her. As the daughter of the nation's most powerful religious figure (a man known only as Father), she lives in privilege, wrapped in the certainty of the new religion that governs life, death, and everything in between.
But certainty cracks.
When Leonore witnesses two unthinkable mysteries in a single day, her carefully constructed world descends into dangerous questions.
THE DESCENT is a dystopian thriller about the cost of female obedience, the weight of buried memory, and the unraveling of a world built on sanitized lies and sacred control.
What You're Getting Into
Every other day (or close to it), you'll receive a new chapter in Leonore's awakening. It’s the story of a woman discovering that sometimes the most dangerous thing you can do is start asking questions.
This is a serialized novel that explores what happens when we stop accepting what we're told and start examining what we've never been allowed to see.
The Story Behind the Story
I wrote THE DESCENT as part of my Ph.D. in Creative Writing. It’s based on a dream I had in 2017 (way before many of the themes and global issues it addresses began to come true). I wanted to explore the particular weight that falls on women to be compliant, to smile through systems that diminish us, to keep the peace even when that peace comes at the cost of our own awakening.
Leonore's journey from obedient daughter to dangerous truth-seeker mirrors the journey many of us take when we realize that the stories we've been told about safety, about goodness, about what's "outside the walls" might be designed to keep us exactly where we are.
Ready to Cross the Threshold?
New chapters publish mostly every other day. You can read the entire story for free, right here, as it unfolds.
Want more? Join The Underground for monthly short stories exploring the world beyond these chapters, live writing sessions where you help steer new stories, and the inside scoop on what happens when the cameras stop rolling.
I want you to read this story. I want you to follow Leonore as she discovers that sometimes the most radical thing a woman can do is refuse to stay where she's been placed.
Chapter One drops soon. The descent begins.
Questions? Thoughts? Theories?
Drop them in the comments. I read every single one, and your insights often find their way into the story itself.
Welcome to the other side of certainty, heroine.
LM xx
P.S. If you know someone who needs to read about a woman who refuses to stay quiet, share this with them. Revolution starts with one person willing to ask the questions everyone else is afraid to voice.