Every Bright Thing

In the decaying Appalachian town of Burnt Ridge, West Virginia, during the 1990’s, fifteen-year-old Daniel exists on society’s margins. Scarred by his mother’s death and his best friend’s disappearance, he’s resigned to a life of isolation. But when newcomer Lucas abruptly arrives at school, the two boys form an immediate and intense connection.

Lucas however, is under the brutal control of a man named Michael Pitchford, an ex-convict and meth cook, who’s on the run from both a vicious drug cartel and a mysterious, shadowy organization called The Network. So as Lucas reluctantly opens up about his shocking past, Daniel becomes increasingly consumed by his need to get Lucas to safety at all costs, and eventually, as the violence draws to a head, the two boys are forced to hit the road, embarking on a desperate cross-country adventure against a backdrop of civil unrest and climate collapse. 

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Their journey across America via the great plains and the neon chaos of Las Vegas, finally ends on the blood-soaked streets of Los Angeles, and what begins as an escape, turns into a desperate fight for survival, a fight which will test their loyalty, courage, and even their understanding of what it means to be alive. Will the boys learn to survive on the streets of a hostile city? Will they find the home and family they’ve always longed for? Will Lucas ever learn the awful truth of where he came from? Why is there no record of his birth? And did he really murder his father before leaving Burnt Ridge?

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As the two boys navigate LA’s treacherous criminal underworld, they’re aided by an unlikely crew of allies, including a trainee journalist, a Russian street kid, a Hollywood actress, a millionaire entrepreneur, a savage anarchist drug dealer from the Valley, and their two new friends, Jack and Kade, a couple of runaway pickpockets from Texas. Together, they navigate LA’s treacherous maze of slums, chop-shops, car lots, clubs, beaches and penthouses, all while confronting addiction, blinding heat, starvation, violent hobos, hostile gangs, deranged film stars, sorority houses, illegal raves, and their own traumatic pasts. But as the years turn, and their wealth, influence and sanity spiral out of control, Daniel must face his most terrifying fear yet—that in saving Lucas from Michael, he might have actually lost him forever.   

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Set deep within a mystical American landscape shimmering with superstition and menace, Every Bright Thing exposes the devastating impact of addiction, abuse, and mental illness on vulnerable queer youth abandoned by an uncaring system. This visceral bildungsroman explores the beauty and brutality of the human experience, exploring how belief, hope, and art can transform even the most desperate of circumstances. Epic in scope yet intimate in focus, Every Bright Thing is both a maximalist love story and a tragic modern fairytale — an unflinching portrait of two teen boys fighting to create their own definition of family, safety, and home, in a world determined to destroy them.

 

 

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​ “I think every book should take risks, and be experimental to a certain   

  extent, and if you're not, then you're letting the form down,”

 

  - Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life.

 

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THE LAST DAYS OF SUMMER always bring trouble. The glaring sky, a mean and spreading thing, light-streaky and dangerous. The white-baking heat, sticky as a loyal dog’s panting, everything smeared with flies. Ain’t nothin’ gentle out here, the sunlight fierce enough to peel the skin off your thoughts, the dry wind bitter with the stench of rotting metal. But even as the air slumps heavy through the trees, time circles back to that one frost-bitten night what bent my whole life crossways. Just thinkin’ on that night makes me turn wrong inside, like an unfinished murder ballad, my stomach filled with rage. Because time don’t always feel like a gift, and in the years that followed, time made me an empty boy, a creature made from nothin’ more than black coffee grounds and cigarette ash, my fragile heart stuffed into my chest like a dead fox in a shopping bag.  

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I'm having an episode, I know this, and a manic one at that, an anxious one, the worst one in a terrible series, like on one of them awful sitcoms (THE WORLDS WORST BOY), where everything dissolves into cringe and yet the laugh track goes on regardless. Although I guess it’s better than the Big Empty. Or the Grief Mountain. Shit, that motherfucker ain’t no laughing matter. I still don’t know how high it is and there ain’t no one offering to climb it with me.

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Overhead, a red-tailed hawk cries once, sharp and alone, but then falls silent. I’m almost there now, fighting through the trees that grab and snatch, kicking up a stomp past the high-voltage substation, past the fleabag motel, my eyes gone narrow on the field where it happened, my brain flooding with memories. Soft flesh meeting frozen soil. The biting stink of gas. The whisper of broken wings overhead.

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The sorry patch of dirt where my mom died.    

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Sight of it freezes me solid, ‘cause there ain’t no way to view this cursed patch of ground without feelin’ bitter inside, the memory of that night like a demon’s fist squeezing my insides till I can’t hardly breathe for the choking of it. So now I’m mad-face starin’ at the broke motel, with its gap-toothed porch and rotting shutters. The wild mess of ferns punching tough through the fence. 

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Guess I’m tryna look at anythin’ other than the field where it happened.

  

Where my childhood ended.    

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So I’ve got this theory, right? How there must be certain moments, scattered throughout our lives, what change a person forever. No warning. No instruction manual. Just BAM! —  life changed forever. ‘Cause in the four long years since the accident, it’s like I’ve been frozen in time, not some bratty kid anymore, but sure as hell not grown neither, like somethin’ caught between worlds. So I guess it made sense, when I first started livin’ in my head, as if the only way to deal with the madness of the world was to trouble it with make-believe. ‘Cause maybe that’s how we survive what can’t ever be undone. We create what never was, hoping it somehow fills the space of what can never be again. It’s basic mathematics. Cut out the part that burns, add some wishful thinking, and hope it somehow equals somethin’ you can live with.

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Some folks might call that a coping mechanism. I call it survival.

 

And so the years roll by, and sure, the pain dulls somewhat, but I still get a bad taste in my mouth as I pass by — ash and lead and something like paint stripper. It don’t matter that years have passed since they winched our broken car through the fence and towed it away. It don’t matter that I’ve stomped this ground a thousand times, eyes downcast like I’m huntin’ for something, ‘cause here I am again, like I’m forever bearing witness, forever hoping to learn some sorta secret truth as to why things fell apart the way they did, like knowin’ the shape of it might make this tale my own, as if through ownership, I might finally understand.     

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​​ "I'm interested in heartbreak as an experience that shapes the self and can illuminate

 larger existential truths about memory, grief, longing, desire, and abandonment."

     

 - Madelaine Lucas

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Full Artist Bio

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Daniel Sheen is a queer artist and writer. He's obsessed with misfit indie boys, wilderness, folklore, modern fairy tales, homesickness for places that don't exist, and longing for things he can never have. His short works of fiction have been published in dozens of magazines worldwide, including XRAY Magazine, BLOOD + HONEY, Resurrection Mag, Queer Cumbria, DIF Writer's Zine, Stone of Madness Press, and the notorious SCAB MAG. His artwork has also featured in numerous international magazines, including a full-spread editorial in Black Flowers Magazine, and recently he has designed his very first book cover for Rebel Satori Press and is now in a secret collaboration with a teen fashion magazine. He's had Pushcart nominated stories published in two anthologies, one published by FILTHY LOOT in the US, and the other by RAM EYE PRESS in the UK. He's been nominated for the 2023 Pushcart Prize, Longlisted for the 2024 Uncharted Magazine Young Adult Award, Longlisted for the 2025 Caledonian First Novel Award and nominated for Best of the Net 2026. He's currently editing a zine, and writing his debut trilogy of novels.

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 “The 'tragic flaw' is what makes tragedy so satisfying. Even if everyone dies, it feels like the

  only possible outcome, because we felt it coming from the start.”

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   - M. L. Rio – author of If We Were Villains

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​Artist Statement

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Every Bright Thing is not your regular young adult fare — it’s a book that doesn't apologize for being what it is. A mess of chaotic rage writhing in the shadows. Because there are some things in this world that are only seen clearly in the dark, just like there are certain types of pretty which can only emerge when the light falls elsewhere.

Many novels thrive on minimalism. Almost every MFA textbook will tell you that keeping things spare lets the reader do the work. But I think there’s a truth in the opposite approach. And the unapologetic result of this truth is a story that serves as a ferocious reminder that not all forms of excess are negative. Because the way I see it, YA should be as hard to define as adolescence itself. After all, nothing is more full-tilt crazy than the years of our adolescence. This is why Every Bright Thing refuses to be another easily digestible retelling of familiar tropes designed for maximum profit.

 

The same complexity applies to fairy tales. Especially the original Grimm fables. They are unpredictable, gory and nuanced, often with a stubborn lack of redemption. Sometimes the kids are rewarded, but just as often, what the protagonists endure is so terrible, so life changing, that a happy ending feels almost meaningless, an inadequate response to an act of extraordinary survival. Every Bright Thing steals from the bones of the fairy tale while subverting their emotional landscape. Sure, there are young kids in trouble who have to face down the worst kind of scary all on their own, but there ain’t no mentors in this world, no wise old-folks, no grown-up saviours rushing in to save the day. And there ain’t no moralistic preaching either. The kids in my world have to save themselves in whatever way they can, they have to raise themselves up with guile, and grit, and violence. And yet, unlike a fairy tale, this book concerns itself more with the characters emotional response to these challenges. As such, I’ve attempted to merge the psychological specificity of contemporary literary fiction with the casual smart-mouth sarcasm of YA and the menacing-but-dreamy, time-don’t-matter quality of a fable.

 

In short, I wrote this novel for the confused, the lonely, the questioning, the neglected, the abused. This is for all those queer kids who ride skateboards and dirt bikes, who hunt and fish and run wild in the woods and start fights at school, who listen to Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails instead of Madonna. This book ain’t a novel, it’s a survival manual for a version of us that no one ever asked about. It's a trojan horse for everything I've never been able to say out loud. I'm writing the novel that I wished I could have read at sixteen. Because for me, it turns out living with addiction was an appropriate response to being a queer child of trauma, and making room for grief through writing was my way of giving my heart the space it needed to heal.

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As John Yorke points out when discussing the studies of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, it ain’t past blockbusters we should be focusing on, for every game-changing work of art is a Black Swan — something that no one saw coming or had ever conceived of before. Every Bright Thing aspires to be that unexpected emergence — a middle finger to a tiktok world that’s making you feel disposable. And besides, the way I see it, all the best stories have a few things in common. They don't please everyone, not everyone survives, and everyone leaves changed. 

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More information available on request