Writing

Below you’ll find blurbs for my novels, novellas, short stories and serial flash stories. Or – in the case of the flash series – you’ll not. There may also be some soundtrack selections because music be the food of love.

Novels:

This Is Not Heaven

(Adult: Cross-genre Metafiction, Comm/Lit/SF – Complete)

Utilizing academic writing, footnotes and marginalia, TINH presents the story of an anonymous student who – enamored with a young family of color – pens a treatise that both chronicles the group’s ill-fated pilgrimage for justice and denounces the contract that brought immortality to earth in the first place.

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The Last Life of Avrilis 

(YA: literary sci-fi with steampunk aesthetic – Complete)

As a Sentient living at the end of time, sixteen-year-old Avrilis is one of the few to know that life repeats, replaying a script exactly. As an orphan cloistered in her home for the past three years, she knows that even a scripted life can suddenly change. It has, this time around. Her mother died; her father disappeared. Her only companions have been the other planet in the sky, her memory of a boy called Isaac, and the protective “halo” that absorbs the electricity a Sentient creates by living off-script – even if they didn’t have a choice.

Leaving home is Avrilis’ only chance at finding the real Isaac and uncovering what ruined her family’s script, making this lifetime go so terribly wrong – but outside, zealots are preying on anyone who defies the planets with change. When Avrilis saves the life of a vagabond moments before he’ll die, she means him to be her protection. Instead, the two find the subterranean Sentient city – and that the father who abandoned her has a plan to end the world for good. Now she’ll cross the sky from her planet to the other and find out whether this world is worth saving – as long as the zealots and the end of time don’t catch up to her first.

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Cait After Exile

(YA: Sci-fantasy – Complete)

Life doesn’t begin at birth. Life begins after exile.

For generations, childhood has been characterized by a fear that doesn’t end – not even during the years spent far away from what never felt like home and people who don’t yet feel like family. This is exile, a plan devised out of necessity, to keep children safe when the gift inside of them begins to mature. After puberty, the magic will fade and the poachers who’ve stalked and stolen them will let them be – that’s when life’s supposed to begin.

But the night sixteen-year-old Cait Iman is hustled out of bed and the safehouse where she’s lived for the past four years, she isn’t sent back where she came from. Instead, she finds herself at the Federal Compound where people only slightly older than her are taking charge and the talent that should have died in her bones is brought back to life.

Now she’ll get one secret week to see what she’s really made of – a gift that may be more power than curse. After that she’ll have to choose: keep her gift and learn to fight, or be done with exile and return to the life she was promised.

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Short Stories:

Jigsaw

(Adult: Speculative Literary – Complete)

True love means a perfect fit, and Eva Paul is pre-love. She’s more than a Jigsaw client preparing to be coded to her fiance; she’s also a Rehabilitator, a case worker helping couples who originally rejected the procedure find their way out of the unfortunate lives that result. Because second only to the motto that changed the world is this: The first order isn’t always the right one. Now Eva will piece the day together – rearranging her 4^th pre-love appointment, her visit to the volatile couple living in the exile they’ve chosen, and a stolen hour on the bench outside of Jigsaw where she holds a daily vigil – to decide her place in this puzzle.

*Apologies if this is not ready for public consumption. At the moment, I love it. (But then, it may make more sense to me than a reader…)

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Caroline Samir is Alive and Well

(Adult: Speculative – Complete)

Caroline Samir is not a Luddite, just because she doesn’t want a reader embedded in her arm. Her husband, Darec – ever on the cutting edge and constantly plugged in to the domain that serves as news, social media, communication hub, and life overall – will like it or lump it. But when change happens at the speed of bytes and the whole world knows about it in real time, the punishment for not being plugged in is being the last to know that life as Caroline knows it is over.

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 Letters to Margaret

(Adult: Literary – Complete)

The title may well change, the story may not be for the market, but it’s coming and the character is clear. Things happen differently with this one. I decided to write something, that it couldn’t be speculative, that there had to be a reason (this is a loaded word for me, no time to explain) and writing revealed it. I remember that used to happen more often before I wrote genre fiction. But now I know here, so I know I’ll finish it.

Anywho. Here’s a selection from the writing playlist:

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Serial Flash Fiction:

Thus far, there are three completed pieces of what I hope to be 20 – 30, making the collection roughly novella-length when it’s done. However, since they’re all standalone, there’s some room for changes of plan. At the moment, I’m enjoying writing a progressive story told in self-contained flash pieces which vary in tone and occasionally POV – never wrote in 2nd before #3! – that can also be taken as a whole.

#1: Eloise & Chance

#2: Outside Chance

#3: So(u)l Companion

Novellas:

Keepsake

(Adult: Speculative Literary – Complete)

It is the 1920s as they were but for one thing: the ability to extract unwanted memories. In 1925 Montreal, Elsie – aka Dolores Extract No. 1 – is a Mem, a clone born of such a procedure. But unlike the others, she isn’t fixed in the moment she represents; she knows where she is, what she is and that no other Mem has lived so long.

After living eighteen years in the real world, extraordinary Elsie is recalled to the Vault, the safe deposit dormitory where the other Mems live and expire. Her Source – the original Dolores – is planning to reprint Elsie, but the  process of printing memories over an existing clone has proven to significantly shorten its lifespan. Fighting back will force the outside world to grapple with the question of what it means to be a Mem, something of which Elsie can’t be sure herself. To the Professor who has been her father – and the father of the Mem technology – she has been redemption; to Harvey, the scientist to whom she’s assigned inside the Vault, she has been a muse and quagmire; to the man who married her Source, she is the piece of Dolores he never knew – the best piece. Now, in the time she has left, Elsie might define what it means to be human.

Keepsake Sample:

I am a memory. Now I suppose I’ll live like one.

I received the telegram a week before I approached the receptionist’s desk. A lovely girl was stationed there; a student, no doubt. What they call an undergraduate, which means she’s naïve. She may have mistaken me for a student as well, except that I handed her a 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.

After that she must have known what I am, though if she was shocked or intrigued 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’re in awe, people must tell you so. It becomes the way you distinguish one from another, by what forces them to react.

~

There are several novels/novellas at some stage or another of completion (one called Imogen but just for now; The Weight of Alabaster; The Momentary Light Afflictions; etc). There are several short stories meant for the same collection. There are screenplays at various stages of completion, and some projects waiting to decide whether they’re for the page or the screen. There is a television series. There are a few stage plays.