CURRENT WIPS:
CAMP TURTLE WALK
YA – Magical Realism – Approx. length 70k
Can a scarred-up old turtle with a mythical name really grant romantic wishes?
FAIRAPY
Fantasy – Fractured Fairy Tale – Approx. length 70k
Tell us what you don’t like about your happy ending…
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THE IMAGINE TRILOGY – Upper MG Fantasies
IMAGINE
Upper MG Fantasy – Completed MS
Humans only think they’re in charge of their imagination…
As an Imaginary Friend, Scott has entertained human toddlers for hundreds of years, but none quite like twelve year-old twins Simon and Janie. Their twin telepathy allows Scott to be the “third sibling” and able to interact with both instead of only one. A rarity that stumps Scott’s employers at the Imaginary Friends Network, but is also an experience that has Scott longing to be human. Unfortunately, the laws governing Scott’s world demand his recall on the stroke of the twins’ thirteenth birthday, just days away.
A bittersweet summer day turns horribly wrong when a line-drive to the head traps Simon in a coma with a Knight Terror. To save his friend, Scott must convince the IFN Board of Elders to allow him to attempt the Trials of Conscientia to win his humanity, banish the Knight Terror, and wake Simon.
The Trials bundle all of Scott’s fears into a multi-level video game-like world of Conscientia: a plummet-to-your-death rock wall, a toilet-flushing water-slide cave, a hungry horde of crab grass, and a big top finale filled with psychotic carnies. If Scott doesn’t pass each challenge, he’ll be imprisoned as a Knight Terror, a soulless nightmare creature doomed to torture humans’ dreams. Worst yet, he’ll replace the Knight tormenting Simon’s mind and will be forced to victimize twins’ nightmares forever.
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DREAM
How do you escape the nightmare when you ARE the nightmare?
Upper MG Fantasy – WIP
Scott is indebted to Khrys, the Knight Terror who befriended him in Conscientia and who Scott unknowingly returned to the Imaginary Friends Network for capture. Khrys is being held hostage in the darkest recesses of the Nocturnal Nightmare Network and is forced to terrorize humans’ dreams and feed on their fright and anxieties.
Through Scott’s mental connection to Janie, her dreams reveal Khrys in mortal battle with Merrick, the mad-eyed Knight who holds him captive. But Khrys grows weak, and the Muse he loves risks all to come out of hiding and beseech Scott to rescue him.
Janie is the human portal Scott needs to breach the Fearscape and travel into the imagination underworld. Together they must battle their own fears to survive the horrors from the deepest recesses of their minds. Will Scott and Janie elude capture and madness to help Khrys escape the NNN and become human, too? Or will they surrender their own humanity, lost forever in a nightmare?
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HOPE
When all is lost, Hope guides the way.
Upper MG Fantasy – WIP
Scott must find the elusive Muse from Khrys’ past who had prompted him to rescue Khrys. A Muse travels a higher spiritual plane of the Imagination. They provide hope to humans in despair. When Khrys was imprisoned by the Nocturnal Nightmare Network, his Muse vanished to escape the same punishment. Their crime? Love. Khrys’ Muse bestowed the forbidden gift of human touch upon him, condemning them both to a life of exile. She remains hidden in the vast realm of Imagination.
The torture and anguish of enslavement as a Knight Terror has decayed what little humanity Khrys had left. He suffers from alternating nightmare and manic personalities. The Muse that gave Khrys the gift of touch made him nearly human once. Scott hopes she can complete the gift and heal Khrys’ fragmented mind. Can Scott put together the clues of her disappearance and discover her whereabouts so he can reunite the star-crossed lovers? Or will Khrys’ insanity consume him?
*****
THE “MY LIFE….” SERIES – YA CONTEMPORARIES
MY LIFE IN THE VOID
Either you’re in, or you’re Void.
YA Contemporary – Completed MS 72k
After four schools in five years, Taryn Greene is tired of living in the constant new-girl-in-school limbo she’s dubbed The Void.
Preppie Taryn gets dumped off by Mom to live with her outcast Goth cousin – who promptly ditches her. Taryn knows the fit-in-quick drill, having deciphered high school cliques long ago, but a yearbook photography project forces her to peer closer through her camera lens and find more than a one-dimensional snap shot of outward appearances. Loner Goth boy Jack may not be the juvenile delinquent his black-on-leather depicts, and jock hero Carson Gray may not be as golden as his varsity letterman’s jacket medals. Both boys vie for Taryn’s heart, but first she has to find the truth behind the stereotypes and rumors before finally working her way out of The Void.
***
MY LIFE AS A WENCH
Step aside Goth Girl and let me show you a *real* freak show.
YA Contemporary – WIP
Adie accepts her outcast Goth girl status with bravado and pride until she realizes her anti-social appearance stands between her desperate desire to buy an antique hearse for her ride and scoring a job to pay for it. No one wants to hire a doom and gloom corpse. So, after a failed ice cream parlor interview, a snide jibe from one of the perfect blonde Dairy Belles working the counter – “Go get a job at Ren Faire with the rest of the freaks!” – compels Adie to do just that. Why not? At least she’ll fit in. But once she starts hawking turkey legs and getting to know her fellow Rennies, Adie quickly finds out that identity is more than a costume, and that her protective Goth walls will need to come down before the hottie jousting squire will have anything to do with her.
Betsy Norman 