Now Free to Read on Royal Road: Whispers by A. Craine

Something new—and considerably darker—is beginning at Palmista Press.

We are pleased to announce that Whispers, the first book in A. Craine's new The Descent of Self series, is now available to read free on Royal Road.

This is the beginning of a very different journey from A. Craine.

And it begins with a man dying on a country road at two in the morning.

Welcome to The Descent of Self

Bob Adams managed a warehouse.

He still owed four thousand dollars on his truck. He had an ex-girlfriend he had never quite finished being with. And on the final night of his life, he had four tequila shots after telling himself he wasn't going to have any.

Then Bob dies.

When he wakes again, he is lying face down in a tunnel.

And the tunnel is closing.

This is Hell.

Just perhaps not the Hell anyone was expecting.

Hell Is Not Fire

There are no lakes of fire waiting for Bob.

Instead, Hell is seven levels of rock under enormous pressure.

Everything is coming down.

Tunnels collapse. Space disappears. Staying where you are isn't an option.

There is only one direction that remains open.

Down.

And Bob isn't alone.

Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Place

A. Craine hasn't filled Whispers with legendary warriors or heroes prepared for the underworld.

These are ordinary people who arrived carrying all the unfinished pieces of ordinary lives.

Victor Hale spent a decade constructing a defensive personality over the nine-year-old boy who was once bullied.

Hell is extremely interested in what he built.

Noah Ellis had eight months to prepare himself for death.

He still arrived unfinished.

And then there's Ruth.

She's a librarian.

She's looking for her dog.

Each has brought something different into Hell with them, even after almost everything they once used to define themselves has been stripped away.

And Something Is Whispering

Something has been speaking to them since the first hour.

It has been down there for a very long time.

It knows things.

And perhaps most disturbingly of all:

It isn't lying.

That turns out to be the problem.

We'll leave the rest for readers to discover.

Horror From the Inside Out

Whispers is a supernatural thriller, but the darkness at the centre of the story isn't simply about monsters hiding in tunnels.

The Descent of Self is interested in what remains of a person after the structures supporting their identity are removed.

The job.

The home.

The relationships.

The routines.

The version of yourself you present to other people.

The version you present to yourself.

Strip those things away and what remains?

That's the territory A. Craine explores in Whispers.

The horror isn't necessarily the thing waiting in the darkness.

It's the choices people are forced to make when there is nowhere left to hide from themselves.

A New A. Craine Series Begins

Readers familiar with A. Craine will know that his stories tend to place characters into situations where the obvious answer is rarely the comfortable one.

The Descent of Self takes that tendency somewhere much darker.

This is psychological supernatural fiction built around pressure, identity, survival and the uncomfortable distance between who people believe themselves to be and what their choices eventually reveal.

And Whispers is only Book One.

For now, readers can experience the beginning of the series completely free on Royal Road.

Content Warning

We do want to make one thing very clear before sending readers down into the tunnels.

Whispers is very dark.

This is a supernatural thriller that does not soften its subject matter. It contains violence, death and sustained psychological pressure applied to characters who cannot simply walk away from what is happening to them.

Characters are deliberately taken apart—sometimes by things considerably better at understanding their weaknesses than they are.

Being likeable does not make anyone safe.

This one is not for the faint of heart.

Read Whispers Free on Royal Road

We're excited to finally begin sharing The Descent of Self with readers and to introduce another very different side of A. Craine's fiction.

The Descent of Self — Book One: Whispers is now available to read free on Royal Road.

Bob Adams is already heading down.

You are welcome to follow him.

Just remember:

The only direction that stays open is the one that takes you further down.