Author | L.R. Ashcroft

I’ve been thinking about this book for twenty years.

Back then, I didn’t know it would be a novel—I just knew there was something about that world I couldn’t stop thinking about. The pressure to perform. The curated lives. The kind of nights that glittered on the surface and ached underneath.

After college, I lived in Houston—bright-eyed, unsteady, and surrounded by people who made it all look effortless. The city was hot and sprawling and full of contrast: oil money and old money, brunches that bled into club nights, quiet desperation masked as confidence. It wasn’t just a setting; it was a feeling. A code. One I never quite cracked, but always wanted to write down.

That’s how HTX began—not with a plot, but a pulse. A girl caught between who she was and who she thought she should be. A story about the ways we lose ourselves trying to belong, and the quiet, complicated process of finding our way back.

Now, twenty years and five kids later, I’m finally telling it. Maybe because I’ve lived through my own unraveling. Maybe because I know now that reinvention isn’t always loud or glamorous. Sometimes it’s slow. Messy. Unseen. And that’s what this book is really about.

HTX is coming August 2025. I can’t wait to share it with you.

While HTX is inspired by the world I once moved through, the story is purely fictional—every character, event, and detail is imagined. But the feelings? Those are real.