How can you hope to win the battle when the villain is yourself? What happens when life gets to be too much? When the exhaustion of living day-to-day to the tune of “you’re a worthless excuse of a child” and “all people are sadistic, disgusting creatures”? You go somewhere else: to the comfortable, forgiving land of your dreams. So that’s exactly what Claire did. Claire created an alter-ego, Zena, and projected herself into the perfect inner world of Imaginationville (I*V), where skateboards are cars and animals team up with super-powered kids to fight in tournaments. Zena lives contentedly with her friends in I*V and strives toward her goal of being the best hero there is. Claire drones through reality keeping up with Zena’s misadventures via a notebook and solitude. And so Claire and Zena lived a comfortable stasis of a life in two dimensions. Until reality caught up with them. One day, I*V crumbles. Prairies spontaneously combust, prophecies rewrite themselves, and a corroded mass of land bubbles at the north pole of the world. Zena forgets herself and her goal, chasing the suggestions of her friends and fighting invisible enemies. Voices call out to her from inside her head. Her confidence is pitted away as everything she once mastered is rearranged and desecrated before her eyes. Then Volea Villain, an odious presence in the image of Claire’s abusive grandmother, rises from the ash. I*V’s land corrodes at her feet, and monster dogs run rampant, enslaving the citizens. The worst part is that she can’t be defeated; her ego alone paralyzes anyone who dares to defy her. Even worse, her presence reigns in both reality and fantasy, and her dehumanizing remarks are starting to stick in Claire’s head. But Zena must fight back. That’s all she’s known. And nothing will stop her and her friends from fighting for their world back—even if Claire insists there’s nothing left worth fighting for. The first book in the ZCN/TIES series.