Writing Projects
At the moment, I'm gearing up to jump into the query trenches with ANYWHEN. While I enjoy that roller coaster, I'll be writing THE FOUNDING DAUGHTERS, my column, and various short stories.
Check out both YA novel descriptions below.
ANYWHEN
YA, Speculative Fiction
Join us, or die—the message 17-year-old Skye Redmond receives when a stranger arrives at her doorstep with information about a secret agency—and her obituary.
Positive Chase Barton is lying because 1) there’s zero chance she’s dying today or 2) he’s there to recruit her for the same things that led to her expulsion and becoming a friendless social pariah who only trusts her mom, Skye sends him away. His laughable ‘explanation’ about her newly surfaced abilities called melding—where the past bleeds into her present—screams science fiction and not what she knows really happened: a stage fright induced hallucination about traveling back in time
and shooting someone that left her suffering from crippling anxiety. But hours later, when the man she shot in her hallucination causes the predicted car accident, the truth is hard to deny—especially in Chase’s rescuing arms.
Whisked into the fantastical world of the Historical Time Protection Agency, she joins 5 other 17-year-old agent trainees as they learn how to police the timeline through holographic simulations and lessons on things like operating a Model T, working different antique weapons, and riding a horse. This intensive training creates a feeling of camaraderie. In a matter of weeks, these 5 strangers are more than friends to Skye—they’re family. Just as she starts to have confidence in her new life and abilities, her mom and friends are kidnapped by the same man responsible for Skye’s attempted death. To save them, Skye and Chase race through history on a timed scavenger hunt where she must rescue the stranded members of her team while gathering artifacts to pay for her mom’s release.
If family means the world, what would you do to save it?
THE FOUNDING DAUGHTERS
Young Adult, Historical
In June of 1668, a murderer, two orphans, and a sister with a secret sail to New France where 3 will choose a pioneer or soldier as their husband.
Eighteen-year-old Jeanne must escape France before she’s charged with the murder of her husband. The dying wish of sixteen-year-old Elizabeth’s father is for her to be a bride in New France, avoiding a life of prostitution. Fifteen-year-old Anne’s parents are dead, and her half-brother, the heir to the family title and fortune, banishes her from the family estate. Thrown into one of the most notorious 17th century hospital prisons for loving another woman, eighteen-year-old Perrine is rescued by wives of the hospital staff.
These four teens will meet on a ship bound for Canada, their lives forever entwined as filles du roi—king’s daughters—in a program financed by the crown to populate the French colonies. Three will find husbands, all four will find love, and together, with their partners, they will start a new nation.
Who were they?
"The Filles du roi (or roy) were part of King Louis XIV's program to promote the settlement of his colony in Canada. Some 737 of these women married and the resultant population explosion gave rise to the success of the colony. Most of the millions of people of French Canadian descent today, both in Quebec and the rest of Canada and the USA (and beyond!), are descendants of one or more of these courageous women of the 17th century."