Available Now — Published May 24, 2026

We Are the Ashes That Chose to Rise — Scott Parker

We Are
the Ashes
That Chose
to Rise

A Novel by Scott Parker

May 24 is the day I entered this world. Today, it's the day I release a piece of my soul into it. I spent years surviving the fire; on my birthday, I am choosing to release the ashes.

This story is the promise I kept to myself.

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The Story

Even ashes can rise. And maybe that's all we ever needed to be.

— ASH, WE ARE THE ASHES THAT CHOSE TO RISE

A choice made in the dark, with no applause and no guarantee, is what this whole book is really about.

In a fractured, post-revolution America carved into numbered zones, Ash is 22, queer, and carrying twelve years of foster care, survival, and scars he doesn't know how to name. His only constants: Riot — a dog who found a soul under a bridge and licked it back to life. In a world designed to erase him, in a world that kept throwing him away, she is the single constant. She is the only creature that has ever loved him, and the only thing on earth he loves unconditionally. And Zane, the boy who left a note that said “sorry” written in smeared ash, and then disappeared.

When rumors surface about the North Zone — a place of supposed redemption that is anything but — Ash discovers something far darker: a government program systematically rewriting people's memories. Erasing who they are. Replacing them with who they're told to be.

And the scientist at the center of it all? His mother. The woman who abandoned him at twelve.

We Are the Ashes That Chose to Rise is a story about found family, queer love, institutional trauma, and the stubborn, radical act of refusing to disappear.

From the Author

This is my first novel. And I intend for it to be the first of many. I made myself a promise: I would finish what I started. Not because someone told me to. Not on anyone else's timeline or terms. Because for most of my life, I was told what to do, when to do it, and — most damaging of all — "life doesn't work that way."

This book is my answer to all of that.

Ash is a young man who came from nothing, was failed by every system designed to protect him, loved fiercely and imperfectly, and refused — against all odds — to disappear. Zane is the person he almost lost, almost let go of, and fought his way back to. Their story is set in a world far more broken than ours. Or maybe not as far as we'd like to believe.

They are the ashes that chose to rise. I was the kid who chose to live. That choice — quiet, stubborn, made in the dark with no applause and no guarantee — is what this whole book is really about.

If you've ever made that choice too, then you already belong here. Welcome.

Ash isn't just a character; he is the part of me that refused to disappear. And Riot isn't just a dog — she is the heartbeat that kept me going when the world closed in. If you've ever had one soul that kept you tethered to this earth, then this story was written for you.

— Scott Parker

Thirteen Chapters

  1. I Wasn't Born for This, but Here I Am Anyway
  2. Bruises Don't Fade, They Teach
  3. Riot's First Bark
  4. Running from the Past and into the Fire
  5. Love in the Wreckage
  6. Ghosts with Names
  7. And a Taste of Rebellion
  8. Burn What Broke You
  9. The Night We Learned to Breathe
  10. When the World Closed In
  11. Scars That Sing
  12. The Edge of Forgiveness
  13. You Can't Kill a Ghost That Refuses to Forget

The World

THE NINE ZONES
A Divided Nation — Post-World War III
▴ SELECT A ZONE TO REVEAL INTELLIGENCE ▴
Legend
Zone 8 — Ash's Origin
Zone Borders
Cartographic markers
The North Zone
The Garden
The Sanctum
The Sanctum
Location and nature: undisclosed.
▾
⬛ ACCESS DENIED ⬛
CLEARANCE LEVEL INSUFFICIENT · LOCATION REDACTED · FILE SEALED
The Garden
A facility. What grows here is unknown.
▾

Those who enter The Garden do not return the same. Some do not return at all. The facility exists off every official registry — its coordinates struck from maps, its personnel unacknowledged. Whatever is cultivated within its walls, the regime considers it worth protecting at any cost.

"They call it The Garden because things grow there. I've never wanted to know what kind."
Status: Classified Facility · Access Restricted
The North Zone
A known territory. Site of memory reprogramming.
▾

The regime calls it rehabilitation. Everyone else calls it what it is: erasure. Citizens sent to The North Zone return with gaps — whole years hollowed out, faces they no longer recognize, convictions they can no longer explain.

"You can't fight for a memory you no longer have."
Status: Regime Controlled · High Surveillance
ZONE 1
THE SEAT
The seat of power. Fortified. Unreachable.
▾

The Seat does not appear on citizen maps. You are told it exists the way you are told the sun rises — as fact, never as invitation. Its walls have not been breached in thirty years. Power, when absolute, requires no address.

"The Seat doesn't rule by fear. It rules by making fear unnecessary."
Status: Regime Stronghold · Impenetrable
ZONE 2
THE IRON BELT
Industrial stronghold. Built on forced labor.
▾

The machines never stop in The Iron Belt. The smoke that hangs over Zone 2 is permanent — a soot-colored ceiling under which generations have lived and died making weapons for a war they were told was already won.

"The Belt doesn't ask what you want to be. It tells you what you already are."
Status: Regime Controlled · Production Zone
ZONE 3
THE GRAY
Neither ruled nor free. A corridor of silence.
▾

The Gray is the space between truths. The regime claims it. The resistance moves through it. Neither governs it. You survive by belonging to no one, by leaving no trace worth following.

"In The Gray, you don't take sides. You take cover."
Status: Contested · Surveillance Minimal
ZONE 4
THE DIVIDE
Where allegiances fracture. No man's land.
▾

The Divide earned its name because it does exactly that — to families, to movements, to loyalties you thought were unshakeable. It is the front line that moves. The skirmishes here are not always armed.

"Everyone who crosses The Divide comes out different on the other side. That's the point."
Status: Active Conflict Zone · Volatile
ZONE 5
THE HOLLOW
Once cities. Now ghost towns and ash pits.
▾

Walk through The Hollow and you walk through photographs of a life that used to exist. Zone 5 was not destroyed in a single moment — it was abandoned in stages, each wave of departures quieter than the last, until even the quiet left.

"Cities don't die in explosions. They die in packed bags and locked doors."
Status: Abandoned · Unsanctioned Occupation Reported
ZONE 6
THE RUST
Decayed infrastructure. The forgotten middle.
▾

The Rust was never destroyed. It was simply deprioritized — until deprioritized became uninhabitable. The people who remain here are not forgotten by accident. They are forgotten by design.

"Rust doesn't happen overnight. It happens while someone is looking the other way."
Status: Neglected · Minimal Regime Presence
ZONE 7
THE FRINGE
Barely governed. Survival is the only law.
▾

The Fringe is where you end up when you have nowhere left to go. The regime rarely sends enforcers here because the cost of holding The Fringe outweighs its value. That calculation is the only thing keeping it free.

"On the Fringe, no one tells you how to survive. That's because no one knows."
Status: Ungoverned · Resistance Presence Likely
ZONE 8
THE CHAR
Ash's zone. Fort Lauderdale. Still burning.
▾

Zone 8 burned during the war and never fully stopped. Fort Lauderdale is not what it was. It is something else now — something that chose to keep going.

This is where Ash came from. This is where he learned that surviving and living are not the same thing — and decided he wanted both.

"The Char doesn't mourn what it lost. It burns for what it still has."
Status: Ash's Origin · Active Resistance · Still Burning
ZONE 9
THE SINK
The lowest. Submerged. Erased from the maps.
▾

Zone 9 does not appear on official maps because the regime does not acknowledge what it has chosen to let drown. In the regime's records, Zone 9 is not abandoned. It is simply absent.

"They didn't erase us from the map. They drew the map without us."
Status: Officially Erased · Partially Submerged
N S W E
TRUE
NORTH

Chapter One — Preview

I've been hesitant to leave. Waiting to see if Zane will ever come back. This morning the fire was not only burning outside on the street, but inside me as well. I woke up with a burning ambition to find anything more than this. To find him.

I sit up on the broken mattress I dragged from a trash pile three blocks away and try to shake off the hangover from emotions I didn't consent to feel last night. I remember crying. That's usually my cue to move cities or burn something down.

But I can't leave. Not yet. Not until I find that bastard who took what was mine.

What Readers Are Saying

This book hit me in a place I didn't know needed hitting. Ash is the character I didn't know I was waiting for.

— Robert McIntosh

The writing is raw. There are moments that feel uncomfortably real — you find yourself wondering how much of Ash is actually his author. That line between fiction and lived experience is razor thin.

— Erik Schannen

Queer dystopian fiction that actually feels like it was lived, not just imagined. Rare and necessary.

— Shane Riley

The Author

Scott Parker — author

Scott and Avalon. The real-life inspiration behind Ash and Riot. Currently based in Fort Lauderdale, FL, they are proof that the most powerful choices are made in the dark, without applause. Avalon remains the living heartbeat behind this trilogy and the only soul that has loved Scott unconditionally.

Ash isn't just a character he created — he is. He's an extension of Scott — living in a different world, different situations, but carved from the same fire, fear, and stubborn heartbeat that's kept him alive through every chapter of his own life. The pain that hides behind laughter. The chaos that looks calm on the outside. The love that hurts because it's real.

WE ARE THE ASHES THAT CHOSE TO RISE is his first novel. It won't be the last.

Chief Advocate & Friend

I have known Scott since late 2022, and I could not be more proud to call him my friend.

Through the stories he has shared, I learned firsthand of the deep failures within the foster care system. Later, I personally witnessed the crushing failures of our judicial system. These are structures designed to protect, prepare, and uplift; instead, they failed him at every turn. Yet, in spite of a world that consistently worked against him, here he is — standing tall and publishing his first novel.

I have zero doubt that Scott has the unique power to inspire and fundamentally change the lives of young people who share his experiences. I am incredibly lucky to have him in my life, and profoundly grateful that he made the choice to live.

He's been telling stories since he was six — not because someone taught him to, but because the memories insisted. A lyric one day. A sketch the next. Now a novel. And quietly, a memoir. The form was never the point. The truth inside it always was. The ashes that chose to rise were written by the kid who chose to live.

— Robert Brian Gibson