Aya in the Universe

Sixteen-year-old Aya Reyes falls beneath Los Angeles and discovers that death has a city of its own. Beyond it lie hidden worlds, ancient technology, and questions no one seems willing to answer. Her family is still calling her home.Aya in the Universe is a planned five-book YA fantasy series about memory, identity, grief, and belonging. Its adventures follow Aya through unfamiliar realities, where promises of safety can come at the cost of choice. Family, friendship, humor, and the search for hope carry her through worlds that challenge what she thinks she knows.The series begins with Breath Beneath.

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Breath Beneath

Book One of Aya in the Universe | Young Adult Afterlife Fantasty

Sixteen-year-old Aya Reyes feels earthquakes in her teeth before Los Angeles sounds the alarm. At home, her family is still learning to live without her mother.When a quake strikes as Aya frees a stray cat from beneath a dumpster, the pavement splits over pale, living roots. Aya falls with the cat into a world beneath Haven, the city of the dead. Her injured body remains in the alley, where her little brother is calling her name.Below Haven, something called the Quiet speaks in her mother's voice. It eases her pain until answering her brother begins to feel optional. Above, Haven offers beauty, companionship, and relief from grief. But its protection depends on taking the memories that leave a soul exposed.Aya wants to find out what became of her mother. She needs to get back to the family waiting beside her body. In a place that promises to make loss stop hurting, she must decide how much of herself she is willing to let go.

Publication updates to come

About the Author

I'm Joy Minor, a writer based in Kansas City, Missouri, and the creator of Aya in the Universe.For more than twenty-five years, I've worked in financial services marketing and communications, translating complicated systems into language that makes sense to the people affected by them. That interest carries into my fiction. I'm drawn to the relationship between institutions and individuals, especially when protection becomes control.My stories return to memory, identity, grief, and belonging: families learning to live around an absence, people misunderstanding one another, and choices that require compassion without offering certainty. I love fantasy that makes room for wonder, humor, and difficult emotions within an unfamiliar world.Away from writing, I enjoy gardening, spending time outdoors, and following questions about psychology, consciousness, and the ways we make meaning.

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