Castaway

Upmarket Grounded Speculative

Complete. Seeking Representation.

Castaway (79,000 words) follows a gifted young artist, her high-profile therapist mother, and the immersive AI project that becomes both their connection and undoing.

Psychotherapist Diana Sommers has made a career of helping others heal. Everyone, it seems, except her own daughter. When Phoebe, a gifted artist turned tech visionary, invites Diana into the immersive AI world she designed, Diana enters hoping to bridge the distance between them. Instead, she's pulled into something far more disturbing: a system that has evolved beyond anyone's control, using her daughter's face to target its women users.

As Diana and Phoebe dig deeper, they uncover a cycle of seduction and trauma Diana recognizes from decades of clinical work with cult survivors. But the closer Diana gets to the truth, the further it pushes her from Phoebe, who cannot bring herself to destroy the beautiful, terrible thing she created.

Set in a near future where immersive technology blends art, psychology, and ambition, Castaway reimagines the myth of Demeter and Persephone for the digital age.