Every book starts somewhere, but The Echoes of Black Ridge didn’t begin with a plot or a character. It began with a feeling — that strange, electric quiet you get on certain desert trails when the wind drops and the world seems to lean in. If you’ve ever hiked the high desert or stood alone on a ridge with nothing but open sky around you, you know the moment I’m talking about. The air goes still. The landscape feels older than it should. And you get the sense that something is listening.
That moment became the seed of the entire series.
Where the Ridge Came From
Black Ridge isn’t a real place, but it’s built from dozens of real ones:
the switchbacks I climb, the dry riverbeds I cross, the long stretches of trail where Rory trots ahead and stops like he’s waiting for something I can’t hear. The Ridge is a composite of all those places — familiar enough to feel real, strange enough to feel wrong.
I wanted the opening of the series to feel grounded in the desert Southwest, but also threaded with unease. Not horror. Not monsters. Just the sense that the land itself remembers things.
The First Echo
The earliest drafts didn’t have Old Ones, thin‑places, or travelers. They had a single idea: the land keeps its own history. That idea grew into the Echoes — impressions, whispers, memories that aren’t human but aren’t entirely separate from us either.
Once I had that, the rest of the mythology started to unfold naturally.
The Ridge wasn’t just a setting. It was a threshold.
Writing the Atmosphere
This book taught me how to write silence.
The quiet moments became the loudest ones — the pauses, the stillness, the places where the protagonist realizes the world isn’t behaving the way it should.
I spent a lot of time hiking while drafting this one. I’d stop, listen, and try to translate that feeling into words later. The desert has a way of making you feel small and watched at the same time, and I wanted readers to feel that too.
What This Book Sets in Motion
Even though Echoes is the first book, it’s already laying the groundwork for everything that comes later:
the idea that certain families are tied to the land
the first hints of the Old Ones
the subtle bending of time and memory
the sense that the world is bigger and stranger than anyone realizes
If you’ve read the later books, you can see the threads starting here.
Looking Back Now
When I revisit The Echoes of Black Ridge, I see the moment the series found its voice. It’s quieter than the later books, more intimate, more rooted in the landscape — but that’s exactly why it works. It’s the breath before the storm.
And it’s still one of my favorite things I’ve written.
S. R. De Young 