Ochre and Bone

When bisexual Latina painter María Solano flees Morrison, Colorado for Taos, New Mexico, she's seeking inspiration and escape. What she finds is both—and so much worse.

The high desert landscape ignites her creativity. She grinds pigments from the red earth, falls into passionate affairs with Lars and Sofie, a married Danish couple, and with Kai, a closeted Taos Pueblo park ranger. She joins the edges of Raíces Collective, a community of artists performing bastardized ceremonies and "honoring the land."

And she paints. The best work of her life. Like something is painting through her.

But María is disappearing.

First it's just exhaustion. Lost time. Then she notices her hands are translucent in certain lights. She can see through her ribs. Photographs can't quite capture her face. And she's not the only one—other artists at the collective are fading too.

Her Tío Esteban knows the truth. His wife Lucía, an artist, vanished from this same property thirty years ago. Consumed by La Raíz—The Root—an ancient consciousness woven through the mountains, the trees, the earth itself. It feeds on artists, drawing them in with inspiration, then slowly consuming their life force until they dissolve into the root system forever.

María has weeks left. Maybe days. She's already more ghost than person.

Then she discovers Lucía's final journals and learns the terrible secret: one life, sacrificed quickly, will satisfy La Raíz and release everyone else. Lucía couldn't do it—couldn't murder an innocent to save herself. She chose death over complicity.

But María isn't Lucía.

And River—a young sculptor, already 90% transparent—is willing.

Ochre and Bone is a queer folk horror novel about artistic obsession, the violence of survival, and what happens when the land itself is hungry. It's about a woman who makes an unforgivable choice and becomes the dark shepherd—the one who will choose, again and again, who lives and who feeds the ancient hunger beneath Taos.

No redemption. No escape. Only survival, rage, and the long, dark road of knowing what you're capable of.

Perfect for fans of Mexican Gothic, The Only Good Indians, and Carmen Maria Machado.