The Sandbox — cover

In progress · YA speculative fiction

The Sandbox

A young adult allegory about the world beneath the world

If you grew up on Lewis and Tolkien and wished someone would write the next layer down, this is what I’m trying to do.

Still being written. Sign up below and I’ll send chapters as they’re ready.

About the book

There is a structure underneath all of this.

The mornings rest on it. So do the sleepless nights, and the songs that catch you off-guard in the grocery store, and the breath you took just now without noticing. We had a word for it, in the place where I came from. I am going to give you the word, and I am going to tell you how badly it fails.

Our own language did not have a word for it either. We reached for the closest one we had — took it from the Records, where harmonies sympathized across the weave of the song, where one tone struck would call its kin to sound. Resonance. It was an inadequate name. It was the best word we had for what He was, and it stuck because we needed something to call Him, and because every time we said it, the saying gestured at a mystery the word itself could not contain.

There is a story you do not know. You have lived your whole life inside of it.

— Gabriel

About the author

Declan Solace is a tradesman, songwriter, and writer of faith, working at the intersection of embodiment, sexuality, and theology — not from a podium, but from years of being quietly ashamed of the body he was given and having to break his way out.

More on Declan and the house

Podcasters & reviewers

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