A Constellation of Roses is about Trix McCabe, a drifting teenage girl with a gift for petty theft. When Trix is arrested for an unrelated crime, she’s given the choice to go live with her deceased father’s long-lost family in rural Kansas, or face prosecution. It turns out that Trix’s new family is also gifted with magical abilities. Aunt Mia bakes pies that can cure all woes from loneliness to heartbreak. Ancient Auntie can read fortunes. Sixteen-year old Ember can read the darkest secrets of anyone she touches. Trix also finds a friend (and a crush) in town golden-boy Jasper Ruiz, who delivers pies for the family bakery, but it seems like he’s got secrets of his own. While Mia wants to welcome Trix with open arms, Trix is wary of letting anyone into her life. Through a series of flashbacks, readers begin to piece together exactly what happened to Trix and how she came by her mysterious scars. It’s very much a story about deciding if you’re going to let your past shape your future for better or for worse. And of course, family and magic pie! 

Trix is my favorite character. I had so much fun writing Auntie’s witty one-liners, but Trix really had my heart from the beginning of this story. She’s been through some very traumatic experiences, and she has moments where she’s ready to give up, but she keeps holding on. Even when her life is truly ugly, she finds beauty in simple things, like sketching an old couple holding hands on the bus. And I hope that somewhere out there, a reader discovers Trix and finds inspiration in her. Trix’s life is far from perfect, and she’s done some things she regrets, but in the end she chooses to let go of her anger and her guilt, and move toward a brighter future. 

A Constellation of Roses started out with the idea that every scar tells a story. For Trix, her scars tell a sad story, and they’re a reminder of a very dark period of her life. She struggles with how visible the marks are to other people, and the idea that others feel that they have a right to know how she got them simply because they’re visible. The story really started with Trix’s character, this very guarded and lonely girl, but as it expanded, the theme of scars kept coming up with other characters as well. Some of them have physical scars, while others carry around invisible ones, marks of guilt or trauma they’ve experienced in their lifetime. Trix’s main conflict is whether she’s going to let her scars rule her life and her choices, and ultimately, she chooses to rewrite the story of her scars, to see them as beautiful rather than destructive, and let them be an inspiration for good. 

I think if I could choose one song to describe A Constellation of Roses, it would be Tenille Townes’ “Somebody’s Daughter.” It’s about seeing a young homeless woman who’s panhandling at an intersection, and the singer wonders who the girl used to be before she was reduced to only being “that girl by the stoplight.” She wonders about the young woman’s life before this point, when she was a daughter, a sister, a friend, and a first love. And I think that’s an important theme in A Constellation of Roses. It’s about realizing that we’re more than just our struggles. We have worth and value, and even though we might be going through a tough time, we still deserve compassion and kindness.

I haven’t found my perfect Trix yet! But when I was working on character art and trying to find comparisons for how I pictured my characters, I did find a few ringers. I think Zendaya would be perfect for Ember. Not only does she look like how I imagined her, but Zendaya is so talented and creative, which fits in well with Ember. Zayn Malik would make an excellent Shane. He’s got that great devil-may-care smile that is Shane’s trademark as Trix’s first love and the story’s bad boy. And I think Tyler Posey would make a perfect Jasper. He’s a golden-boy with a dark secret, and I think Tyler could pull it off. Betty White definitely has the comedy chops to do justice to Auntie’s many one-liners. But I haven’t found my Trix yet, so maybe some readers can help me cast her! 

A large part of A Constellation of Roses is set in the McCabe Bakery & Tea Shoppe, the family business. So I think the perfect drink for this book would definitely be a cup of hot tea, liberally laced with honey. It would be best enjoyed at home, wrapped up in an old knitted afghan, preferably in an obnoxious color, the sort of blanket which makes more than one appearance in the book, as well! 

I would definitely recommend my debut, The Deepest Roots, which is set in a neighboring town where the girls are all born under a mysterious curse that gives them strange abilities. Careful readers will note that Jasper Ruiz, Trix’s new love interest, is the nephew of Deputy Ruiz from The Deepest Roots! Emily X.R. Pan’s The Astonishing Color of After would also be a good fit!

I’m hard at work on the next book!