Keepsake
(Adult: Speculative concept/Literary style – Complete, Novella)
In an alternate 1920s Montreal, Elsie – aka Extract No. 1 – struggles to define her identity beyond being a Mem, a clone born of a memory.
[Sample below]
Cait After Exile
(YA: Sci-fi Thriller – Complete)
Logline: In an America divided by remarkable gifts, pubescent children live in exile – separated from the region that empowers them – to avoid being poached.
North: Animation. South: Clarity. East: Telepathy. West: Cunning.
Every child in the former United States is born with the gift of their region – and their lives depend on the certainty that they will never see it. Sent to a different region during puberty to keep the gift from generating within their bones, they are ingrained with the mantra that Life Begins After Exile. But when sixteen year old Cait Iman is taken on a surprise detour during what’s supposed to be her last perilous journey across borders, she finds herself at the Federal Compound, her bones alight with the Cunning she’s no longer supposed to have. Now, alongside the cell to which she’s assigned, she’ll have one secret week to see what she’s really made of. After that, she’ll have to choose: play dead and keep her gift (and the Northern boy she’d never see again otherwise) or return to the West and the life she’s been craving for years.
CAIT AFTER EXILE is a completed young adult novel about a world where life doesn’t begin at birth. Life begins after exile.
The Last Life of Avrilis
(YA: literary sci-fi with steampunk aesthetic – Complete)
When Avrilis saves the life of a boy meant to die, her unscripted behavior forces the two of them to run – not knowing whether the hunters or the end of the age will catch up to them first.
Sixteen-year-old Avrilis isn’t sure a world that replays is worth saving. An orphaned Sentient living at the end of the age, she knows that time repeats and that any Sentient guilty of change becomes prey for the hunters. When she saves the life of a street urchin meant to die, the two discover the Sentient Underground – and that the father she believed dead is the prophet with a plan to end the world for good.
Staying one step ahead of the hunters and the end of time, Avrilis must uncover her father’s motive and choose a side. She can join the fight with the boy whose life she saved or face the aboveground while she searches for the one she’s loved in every life before.
The Momentary Light Afflictions
(Adult: Literary – …Was once complete)
When Demetra attempts to know her 27-year-old daughter born of rape, she finds that her chosen identity is as false as the one society tried to force upon her.
Note: This book’s logline and synopsis is still a work in progress.
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There are several adult novels at some stage or another of completion (The Weight of Alabaster, Icharus Flying, Atlantis Submerged, etc). There are several short stories meant for the same collection. There are screenplays at various stages of completion. There is a television series. There are a few stage plays.
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Keepsake:
I am a memory. Now I suppose I’ll live like one.
I received the telegram seven days before I approached the lovely girl behind the receptionist’s desk. She was a student, no doubt. What they call an undergraduate, which means she’s naïve. Perhaps she mistook me for a student, as well, though I handed her the wide, rectangular slip of paper that read: Dolores Extract No. 1. You are hereby recalled to the Vault. Please return to the premises no later than noonday, 30 August, 1925.
Then again, I suppose she must have known what I am, although if she was shocked or intrigued by my demeanor, she made no mention of it. In the eighteen years I’ve lived out in the city, among real people, they always have. Anyone who became aware of my circumstances, of my origin, has been taken aback by the fact that I am so like them. I’ve learned, too, that when they are in awe, people must tell you so. It becomes the way you distinguish one from another, by what forces them to react.
