"Forewarned" by Arborea.

This one is on the playlist almost entirely for the vibes. It has that quiet, haunted, beautiful-but-wrong feeling I wanted Rosenfeld Manor to carry, like something is always waiting just out of sight.

#SongsofSeptember #TheColorsThatHaunt

One piece of advice I used when writing The Colors That Haunt Us: let characters make bad decisions for good reasons.

Clara knows Rosenfeld is dangerous. But grief, curiosity, and caring about Suzette keep giving her reasons to stay.

#QueerPrompts #TheColorsThatHaunt

#WIPSnips #TheColorsThatHaunt
Clara is not having a good time.

A little Clara and Suzette today.

If you like queer gothic stories with impossible longing, haunted art, and relationships where tenderness keeps edging toward obsession, The Colors That Haunt Us may be for you.

Coming October 8.

#TheColorsThatHaunt #BookSky #QueerBooks

ONE MONTH!!!

The Colors That Haunt Us comes out October 8, and every time I look at the calendar I get more excited.

Haunted art. Queer longing. Grief. Obsession. A house that refuses to let go.

Preorder: www.aspenrayne.com/books

#TheColorsThatHaunt #BookSky #QueerBooks

The quieter songs matter too: A Giver, The Rockrose and the Thistle, and The Light That Comes Through hold some of the grief, intimacy, and fragile hope beneath all that dread.

Full playlist:
open.spotify.com/playlist/2d1...

#TheColorsThatHaunt #BookSky

The Horror of Our Love, Nightmare, Confrontation, Your World Will Fail, and The Killing Kind belong to the sharper end of the book.

Love is still love there. It has just become obsessive, frightening, and expensive.

#TheColorsThatHaunt

Then it starts slipping.

Not Yet / Love Run (Reprise), Forewarned, Come Home, Sleepwalk, and I Had a Dream I Died move closer to the book’s ache: wanting, waiting, memory, and the sense that something beautiful is already going wrong.

#TheColorsThatHaunt

Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night in the Week), Witchcraft, All the Way, (Remember Me) I’m the One Who Loves You, and I Will give the beginning that old-fashioned romance—with loneliness already sitting underneath it.

#TheColorsThatHaunt

I made a Spotify playlist for The Colors That Haunt Us, and it may be one of the easiest ways to explain what the book feels like without explaining the plot.

It starts with old standards, beautiful and romantic enough to feel preserved in amber.

#TheColorsThatHaunt #BookSky

#WIPSnips #TheColorsThatHaunt
No witty caption today, unfortunately, this one is pretty straightforward.

Clara has to decide when curiosity becomes danger: leave Rosenfeld Manor while she still can, or stay and uncover what happened to Suzette, even as the house twists her grief, memories, and feelings into reasons to remain.

#QueerPrompts #TheColorsThatHaunt

For Clara, I’d pick “The Killing Kind” by Marianas Trench. She starts by trying to outrun grief, then turns love, art, and obsession into the same pursuit until she gives up pieces of herself to keep Suzette. It feels like her whole tragic arc in one song.

#TheColorsThatHaunt #SongsofSeptember

Clara and Suzette are better at working in parallel than collaborating. Clara investigates while Suzette guards what she remembers, and both keep things from the other.

But they need each other to uncover what Rosenfeld Manor erased, before it erases even more.

#TheColorsThatHaunt #Septversary

Rosenfeld Manor is all wet paint, stale roses, dark halls, and the uneasy feeling that the house has been expecting you.

#TheColorsThatHaunt #BookSky #GothicFiction