A peek in at what I’m working on* (or rather procrastinating on) as we speak. Or as I type. Or you read. Or whatever.
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Title: The Exorcist’s Apprentice
Status: Writing in progress
Genre: Young Adult; Paranormal/Urban Fantasy
At-a-Glance: When an exorcist arrives at Elise’s front door, she doesn’t give him the time of day—she’s in the middle of her own sister’s exorcism, after all. But when the rite fails, Elise leaves New Orleans and tracks down the exorcist whose services she refused. Despite wanting to leave the pain behind her, Elise knows that she’ll never be at peace while the demon that killed her sister is still on the prowl.
Origins: I had hoped that my next work would focus on a strong female lead, but project after project kept fizzling. Then, while reading a heavy dose of YA Fantasy, I realized that “traditional” demons had been relegated to horror movies. I became interested in putting the time-honored concepts of possession into a modern, urban setting with a YA tilt. As my lead began to take shape, I realized that she was the heroine I’d long been pining for. Cue the fireworks!
Comments: The first book that I’ve ever set out to write during summer break, The Exorcist’s Apprentice is also threatening to turn into my longest (I may need to break it into either two books or a trilogy). I hope that Apprentice will come out both gritty and realistic, with a healthy dose of the hope and simple romance that I’m most fond of in YA fiction. Although I’m only part-way through a very rough first draft, words are at least managing to arrange themselves into sentences. At this stage in the writing process, I take what I can get.
So far, this book has taught me that demons are scary. Not that I didn’t know that before, but jeez.
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Title: Grim
Status: Undergoing editing
Genre: Young Adult; Urban Fantasy
At-a-Glance: Erika Stripling never asked to experience anything extraordinary, but after catching the eye of the underworld’s illegitimate and soon-to-be-deposed sixth prince, she doesn’t really have a say in the matter. Taken from her three children, the single mother wants nothing more than to go home, but when she’s told that there’s no going home, a new question arises: How much will Erika risk in order to get her way?
Origins: The first line of the prologue (which may, in a slightly ironic twist, end up being cut altogether) came to me about a year before I wrote Grim, but I had no idea what it went to. Then the image of my male lead came to me during the following summer, stuck in an off-beat situation that never made it into the original draft. I ended up going in a totally different direction, but I kept the character. Soon enough, I realized that he was somehow connected with the woman whose quote I’d jotted down on my dry-erase board months and months before. I sat down with a notebook and drafted up a backbone that could be fleshed out come November.
Comments: My fourth NaNoWriMo contribution and my third win, Grim was the first book that I’d ever plotted before putting pen to paper. After polishing the novel throughout the winter, I submitted the first four chapters to the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards novel competition and won gold. I’ve never been made so euphoric by a single email. For a more detailed account, you can read my story on the NaNoWriMo blog.
In writing this book, I learned that I’m fascinated by religion, and that myth is excellent fertilizer for fantasy writing.
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*Please note: only novels are listed. My short fiction lives on its very own planet.
