My Writing

Articles

I have written three articles for Inkwell: A Student Guide to Writing at the Evergreen State College, the annual publication written and edited by the peer tutors of Evergreen’s Writing Center.

 

Novels

Gaudiloquence and the Frozen Story

[finalist in the Middle Grade category of the 2016 PNWA Literary Contest; fully revised; currently seeking agent representation]

Thirteen-year-old Monoria is exuberant, overly trusting, and a natural storyteller. At her Name Day ceremony, she receives her new adult name of Gaudiloquence. The next morning she discovers that everyone in her town has been frozen, and the Story Fire—the magical fire that holds the town’s stories and memories—has been stolen. Gaudiloquence has always dreamed of living an adventure, but now faced with saving her town as the last woman standing, being an adult is much harder than it looked before. She learns that people will take advantage of her open heart and trusting nature. The only people who take her seriously are a one-handed sorceress, a lovesick minstrel, and a homeless girl with a mysterious past. They help her recover the Story Fire, but she must reawaken it and everyone in her town on her own—and discover why she alone was left unfrozen. Along the way, Gaudiloquence discovers that adulthood, like telling a story, is something you have to create for yourself.

“From the language play—such as giving names to the characters that are rarely used/arcane words in English—to the fantastical world the novel brings the reader into, its details encircling themes of social justice, place, the import of change in one’s life, Frozen Story in all in its inventiveness is shimmering with the sort of ludic lushness that can only come from a talented writer really working and reworking several times over an initial draft borne of a good concept.” —David Wolach, faculty at The Evergreen State College

 

Princesses in the Trees

[in revision]

Puget Sound faces toxic goop produced by plastic-munching bacteria, women die in childbirth every day, and paper books are the stuff of legend. Fed up with boys’ false accusations of witchcraft, twelve-year-old Jacinda leaves the city streets she has survived in her whole life. Braving the rumors of witches and huge tigerwolves that dwell in the forest, Jacinda finds what she came for: a small community of young women and girls, living high in the treetops and calling themselves princesses. Taken into their self-made tribe, Jacinda hears their heartbreaking stories, learns to forage and hunt, crosses into womanhood, and learns to trust and depend on others. She learns the truth about the rumors of witchcraft and about the wild world around her. Having finally found a place she can call home, she holds her new family together when circumstances threaten to tear them apart.

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