I'm Christina Whisler, and I write the kind of stories that cling to you like salt on your skin after a storm?stories where the dead don't stay buried and the living can't outrun their hungers. What the Dead Keep, the first book in The Graves That Answer Back series, is my love letter to the ghosts we carry, the lies we tell ourselves, and the bargains we make in the dark when no one's watching.

I've always been a collector of silences?the kind that hum between headstones, the kind that curl around a half-empty glass of mezcal, the kind that press against your ribs when you're standing too close to the edge of something. My prose is built from those quiet moments, the ones where the air tastes like copper and the past won't stay dead. I write for the women who've been called too much and the men who've been called not enough. For the ones who know what it's like to stand in a graveyard at midnight and wonder if the wind is whispering their name?or their sins.

When I'm not writing, you'll find me in the liminal spaces: the hours between dusk and dark, the stretch of highway where the radio cuts to static, the tide pools that reflect something that isn't you. I live in a house that settles with a sigh, where the walls remember things I don't, and I surround myself with the tools of my trade?black coffee, dog-eared tarot decks, and the kind of silence that isn't empty. It's waiting.

What the Dead Keep isn't just a story. It's an invitation, a dare. The dead are always listening. The question is?are you brave enough to hear what they say?