WANT is under contract with Inkspell Publishing and will be released June 7. It’s a contemporary older YA with hints of Southern grotesque and a heavy dose of psychology.
In fact, Inkspell has just launched a new website just for Want. Check it out!
Here’s the synopsis:
Julianne counts the days until she can pack her bags and leave her old-money, tradition-bound Southern town where appearance is everything and secrecy is a way of life. A piano virtuoso, she dreams of attending a prestigious music school in Boston. Failure is not an option, so she enlists the help of New England Conservatory graduate Isaac Laroche.
Julianne can’t understand why Isaac suddenly gave up Boston’s music scene to return to the South. He doesn’t know her life depends on escaping it before she inherits her mother’s madness. Isaac knows he must resist his attraction to a student ten years his junior, but loneliness and jealousy threaten his resolve.
Their indiscretion at a Mardi Gras ball—the pinnacle event for Mobile’s elite—forces their present wants and needs to collide with sins of the past.
Will Julianne accept the help she’s offered and get everything she ever wanted, or will she self-destruct and take Isaac down with her?
My short story, “Aftertaste,” dovetails with a scene in Want and can be downloaded for free here.
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My next WIP–tentatively titled DO AND DIE completed manuscript–whose title has changed at least five times–is a weird magical realism/paranormal/historical fiction mutt (with a small thread of LGBT, which I totally didn’t see coming) inspired by the show Psychic Kids: Children of the Paranormal and a segment on the Knights of the Golden Circle on Brad Meltzer’s Decoded. It’s set at Mobile’s Oakleigh Mansion, an antebellum Greek revival with an interesting past.
Here’s the synopsis:
It’s been six years since Dylanie and her family visited a Civil War site and the place came alive with cannon fire. Problem was, no one could hear it but her.
Now she’s sixteen, her dad’s moved out, her mom’s come out of the closet and Dylan’s got a spot on Paranormal Teen, a reality TV show filming at historic Oakleigh Mansion. She’ll spend a weekend with two other psychic teens—Jake and Ashley—learning how to control her abilities.
None of them realized how much their emotional baggage would put them at the mercy of Oakleigh’s resident spirits, or that they’d find themselves pawns in the 150-year-old battle for the South’s legendary Confederate gold. Each must conquer their personal ghosts to face down Jackson, a seductive spirit who will do anything to protect the gold’s current location and avenge a heinous attack that destroyed his family.
