Ashen Rider

Ashen Rider #

Releases December 2025 #

Running first as online serial from August to December.

Pandemonium awaits.

After her father’s blind devotion to a fallen goddess leads to her mother’s second death, Kateryna is forced to abandon the stability of her tortured afterlife and decend into Pandemonium—a fractured, hellish world where the dead are not allowed to rest.

To reclaim her mother’s soul, Kateryna must join forces with the last person she trusts: her estranged, fanatical father. Together, they navigate turgid seas, haunted fields, and dive into the heart of a city ruled by the Demon King to escape the ever present gaze of Morgana, the Goddess Corrupted who no longer cares for the balance of life and death.

Pandemonium is not like the mortal world—it reflects the pain they carry and the sins they’ve buried; the consequences of the choices they made in life. As Kateryna’s journey spirals deeper into shadows, she’ll have to confront not only the horrors of hell, but the truth of her own past.

ASHEN RIDER is a dark and mythical tale of perseverance, fractured family, and the cost of redemption in a world where death is only the beginning.

Development #

Progress |xxxxxxxxxxxxxx——| 70% #

  • (X) Initial concept: 2020
    • Concept was first used for an unfinished TTRPG adventure, where the characters meet Cain, a sad paladin in love with a Deathpact Angel (from Magic: The Gathering), who realizes his beloved Angel matron has gone bonkers. The party storm a tower and fight the angel.
  • (X) Short Stories: 2022
    • ~5,000 words between the stories
    • Several short stories exploring different scenes and different approaches to the concept. None of them really sit right with me. Shelved for later use.
  • (X) First Draft (Part One): 2023 to 2024
    • ~28,000 words
    • Between two fiction writing workshops at the end of 2023 and beginning of 2024, I wrote the first two parts of the novella. Parts were editing throughout the classes and workshopped with peers and instructors.
      • First instructor said: “This is wild and good.”
      • Second instructor said: “No editor in their right mind will publish this.”
      • Read a lot of Conan stories to get in the mood. Created a playlist of songs that link to each part.
    • I wrote part three after the second workshop, around the time I established The Literary Fantasy Magazine with Lee Patton. From that point on, this was made into a project that would run in the magazine.
      • I felt real good about part three, but stopped writing after it finished. It was a mix of getting busy with other things and feeling scared of an emotionally taxing story.
      • Part three pulls on very real trauma of mine, and those types of writings have a habit of draining me.
  • (X) First Draft (Part Two): March to April 2025
    • ~43,000 words
    • Finished parts four and five on a strict writing regimen. The blank page was very difficult for me to face compared to What Lies Below—I think it has to do the emotional turmoil of the plot. Instead of my normal pace of 2000-4000 words per day, I trudged through with 300-1000, with a couple days of hitting close to 4000.
    • Wrote “The Scarlet Chair” during the week after finishing the first draft, which was a lot smoother.
  • (—) Second Draft: April to June 2025?? (We’ll see)
    • ~45,000 words
    • Going through the first draft with a rewrite, just like What Lies Below. Parts 1, 2, and 3 are a lot rougher than 4 and 5. Focusing on cleaning up the writing, polishing world building details, and hammering in consistency.
    • Once this is done, it’s getting passed to Lee for an external edit (Thank God).

Mood List #

  • Part One: Riders on the Storm, The Doors (1971).
  • Part Two: A Horse With No Name, America (1971).
  • Part Three: A World So Full of Love, Roger Miller (1970).
  • Part Four: Prairie Fire, Mary Robbins (1960).
  • Part Five: Cleanse Me, O’Brother (2011).