Today, we’re thrilled to bring you a cover reveal and excerpt from Titan Books!

The Afterlife of Mal Caldera is the ‘life-affirming’ coming-of-age fantasy debut from author Nadi Reed Perez, and is due for release from Titan Books on June 11th 2024.

Let’s find out a little more about it…

Mal’s life is over. Her afterlife is only just beginning…

By turns irreverently funny and deeply moving, this debut  contemporary fantasy is perfect for fans of They Both Die at the End and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

Mal Caldera is dead. Not that she cares. She only feels bad that her younger sister, Cris, has been left alone with their religious zealot of a mother, trying to pick up the pieces. While her fellow ghosts party their afterlives away, Mal is determined to make contact with Cris from beyond the grave. She enlists the help of reluctant local medium Ren, and together, they concoct a plan to pass on a message to Cris. But the more time they spend together, the more both begin to wonder what might have been if they’d met before Mal died. 

Mal knows it’s wrong to hold on so tightly to her old life. Bad things happen to ghosts who try to interfere with the living, and Mal can’t help but wonder if she’s hurting the people she loves by haunting their lives. But Mal has always been selfish, and letting go might just be the hardest thing she’s ever had to do…

And now for the cover…

The cover artist is Natasha MacKenzie 

Nadi Reed Perez was a 2020 Pitch Wars mentee and writes for The Call of the Flame, a high fantasy audio drama. They live near Denver with their two cats and a few probable ghosts.

Nadi is on Twitter: @nadireedperez

The Afterlife of Mal Caldera is due for release June 11th 2024, you can pre-order your copy on Bookshop.org

Chapter One

It didn’t bother me much, being dead. I hadn’t really been living anyway. At least now I’d never have to do the dishes in the sink, or worry about the bills piled on the table, or nurse any guilt about staying in every night. Nothing urged me to get out of bed anymore. It felt like I’d been rehearsing for this a long time—how to be a ghost.

But I couldn’t haunt my apartment forever. No doubt it would be back on the market soon, despite being cramped and badly lit, the walls always thumping with aggressive bass, often accompanied by the banshee wail of sirens. My presence would be easy to clear out: just secondhand furniture, piles of laundry both dirty and clean, empty bottles of whiskey and packs of cigs. No decorations, like I’d barely moved in. I hadn’t gotten around to buying plants, or finding art that spoke to me, or making enough friends to showcase on the fridge.

I could linger for however long the place remained unoccupied. But after that, I didn’t really want company. If the next tenant walked around naked, or hosted lots of overnight guests, or brought a bedmate along with them, I didn’t want to see it—well, unless they were hot. I had to wonder how many ghosts had once ogled me in the shower, or on the toilet, or getting busy. I liked to think they’d paid me the same respect I’d give anybody now, not looking.

If I’d been successful enough to afford a house in life, I could’ve stayed longer. Maybe forever, if I didn’t mind someone moving in eventually. There would’ve been way more room, enough for me and them. I could’ve kept to an attic or basement if I wanted privacy, coming out to wander the halls at night. Then again, if I’d been better off, I might not have died so young. 

It might’ve been days since it happened. I had no way to keep track, and nothing to do to pass the time, since I couldn’t touch anything. I failed to make the curtains float, or knock the unopened mail off the coffee table, or force the lights to flicker. It felt like weeks already, but it couldn’t have been that long, because someone ought to have shown up for my things by now.

The cops had probably found my purse on the scene, used my driver’s license to identify the body. From there, they could look up my birth certificate to find my next of kin. They’d have no way of knowing my mother and I hadn’t spoken in years, that she shouldn’t have been the first to find out.

I wondered how it went down. If they’d woken her in the middle of the night, and once again, inconvenienced by my existence, she’d asked what I’d gone and done this time. It didn’t hurt much. Just a quick sting, like a muscle twinge, an accidental regression to my young and tender self, before I remembered and calloused up again. I’d been dead to her for years, anyway.

But I tried my best not to think about my sister. I would rather have nobody in the whole world give a shit than remember I had just one person who’d care. 

Well, probably. We used to fight a lot.

The sound of the lock turning in the door made me jump. After leaving my body, my mind hadn’t gotten the memo, supplying phantom limbs in its place. Hopefully it would just be the cops again, or my landlord. 

I hauled myself up from bed, as heavy as if I still had bones. My chest thumped with the figment of a heartbeat.

Cris hovered in the doorway, perhaps reluctant to come in uninvited. Her eyes stared right through me.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and shot her some finger guns. “Hey, sis.”

She didn’t reply, of course. I barely dodged in time before she could walk through my incorporeal form.

I threw up my hands. “Make yourself at home.”

It didn’t feel like I’d gone anywhere. More like I’d said something to piss her off, make her slam the door on her way in, give me the silent treatment. And yet, my stomach twisted with a chilly sense of dread, like the feeling of being watched. As if she were the otherworldly presence, not me.

Or maybe I couldn’t accept the reality of being separated by so much more than a couple of feet.