The Deal (full title TBD) is an adventure story the likes of Alice in Wonderland, only if it were more "mature" and "grounded in reality". It follows Mercedes Faris, a small-town chicken rancher freshly disillusioned with her life, as she struggles to navigate the world after having a heartrending fallout with the only friends she's ever had.

During mid August, about a month before her 22nd birthday, she's feeling especially miserable about the disaster. To try and get her to do something other than mope, the last remainder of her friend group, Rue, invites Mercy to visit her at her new job—an elaborately-themed diner called Danique's. Mercy and her aunt have been providing eggs to the diner for some time, but she's never bothered to attend it for herself.

Prompted by inquiring about the menu's curious "cactus burger", she meets the chef of the diner, Beau. Mercy immediately becomes infatuated with him and dives head-first into stringing him along a turbulent, precarious relationship in a desperate attempt to recreate her old life. Much of this is against his older brother's better judgment.

This may turn out to be the worst decision she's ever made, as things quickly become unsettling, confusing, and unearthly. At the beginning of October, Beau disappears without warning, and it's on Mercy to find out where he's gone.

The earliest ideas for this story were established on October 18th, 2019. It's undergone several passes, revisions, and complete overhauls since then. It's essentially been ship-of-theseus-ed into what it is today. If you've heard some version of it in the past, or some part of it, or whatever, it has a high probability of being outdated. Thankfully, after years of saying "I think it's finally not going to change anymore," it's finally, FINALLY, not going to change anymore. For sure this time.

The skeleton of the main story is fully mapped out. I need to write it all down somewhere so we can keep track of it, but a lot of what needs to be done now is fleshing out existing story beats. It's pretty much ready to be written, but I have to finish and successfully publish my current book first! That will be the test to see if getting this out there is something I'm capable of. I really appreciate everybody's patience and support! <3

Content Warnings

The Deal contains themes of :

  • manipulation
  • loss
  • neglect
  • smoking and alcohol
  • obsession
  • impending fate
  • unhealthy/abusive relationships
  • cannibalism

It isn't meant to be an especially dark story, but some dark subjects are consistently explored, so be careful!

What to expect?

It will likely be a good few years before this story gets to your hands in book form. I've been quite slow with my current book, but the hope is that I'll get my routine on track and start working on it consistently again. When that happens, I'll be sure to keep this site updated on my progress!

Till then, I'm thinking of creating a portion of the site to inform people of the book I'm working on currently, since I haven't talked about it publicly, nor have I made animations or much visual content on it.

Keep an eye out! My goal is to release it this year :-)

DENTALHYGIENE / THiMBLETEETH pocketphoenix