Chrysanthemum
An original literary novel in development centered on grief, addiction, memory, redemption, and the strange symbolic machinery by which a life begins to reassemble itself.
Project
Chrysanthemum is a long-form fiction project built around a mythic transformation arc. Its structure draws on the monomyth and alchemical symbolism while keeping the emotional center grounded in human loss, responsibility, love, and recovery.
Creative approach
- Character-driven literary storytelling
- Recurring symbols and visual motifs
- Jungian and mythological architecture
- Dreamlike elements anchored by psychological realism
My role
Concept development, worldbuilding, structural design, character arcs, thematic architecture, drafting, and revision.
Structural architecture
Disorientation, grief, fracture, and descent.
Reflection, clarification, and confrontation with memory.
Emerging awareness and a new relationship to meaning.
Integration, embodied change, and return to life.
Opening image
Chapter One, “Static After Midnight,” begins on a rainy late-night train: an elderly woman carrying chrysanthemums, a whispered childhood nickname, and a radio transmission that seems impossible. The scene establishes the novel’s central uncertainty: whether its mysteries are metaphysical, psychological, symbolic, neurological, or somehow all of them at once.