My Work

I am pursuing publication on a few different projects, but I don't have much to link to as of yet. However, I'm including what I can to give you a little taste of my writing. I hope you enjoy!

Creative Samples

Master's Thesis:

Life: Told by Death

Life: Told by Death is the story of Sam, a reluctant reaper of souls who isn’t cut out for his fate. This novel excerpt follows him from his unwitting entrance into the life of a reaper and explores his struggle with his new existence.

First Few Lines:

“Hello there” were the first words the old woman had spoken in several hours. She had been rocking in the old, rickety swing on the front of her house shuffling playing cards absentmindedly all afternoon.

Her granddaughter, who was sitting next to her reading a book, sat up startled by the sudden sound.

“Who are you talking to, Grandma?” she asked.

All of these covers are fake. I made them in Canva.

Project Status:

After submitting this section of the story for my master's program back in 2018, I set this project aside. I was feeling burnt out from the pace that I had to maintain to finish on time, I wasn't sure about the voice in the piece, and I didn't know what direction I wanted to take the story.

However, I am still very much in love with this reluctant reaper character I created, and I fully intend to come back to this sometime soon. I've grown a lot as a writer in the last several years, and I've been toying with the idea of making this a stand-alone, tragic love story with two points of view, Death's and his love interest Tristyn's. Death's side of things will be told in a conversation he has with Lily, whose soul he's come to claim. Tristyn's will be told in a series of letters addressed to her sister. I'm excited to get back to this and to see where it goes.

What I Write

When I'm writing longer works, I tend to create dark young adult fantasy stories that are centered around characters struggling with grief and morality who are trying to figure out where they fit in the grand scheme of things once they discover that the world isn't so black and white. My works also usually have a romance subplot and intricate world-building.

Tropes I Love:

Found Family
The Chosen One
Orphans who discover they have magic
Reluctant Royalty
Coming of Age
First Love
Rivals/Enemies to Lovers

Tropes I Hate:

Love Triangles (especially if the main character's love interests are siblings like in The Summer I Turned Pretty...)
Miscommunication
"I'm breaking up with you to protect you..."
Fated Mates

Short Stories

My writing group does a short story exchange for holidays where we write a story based off the prompt of another group member, so the stories listed below are a little outside my typical writing style, but they were fun and great way to challenge myself as a writer.

Luminescence

The Prompt: A cozy fantasy about a festival.

The Story: As part of an annual festival, two fairies are selected for a quest to find the fireflies, the magical creatures who grant them the ability to fly.

Excerpt:

Moss glistened with morning dew and squelched between my fingers as I clung for dear life to the coated stone. Water droplets rolled down to the ground around me as I pulled myself up with shaking arms. I prayed for a dragonfly to pass by. Flick, at this point, I’d take a fruit fly if it could get us over this rock faster, but the sun was only just rising and the dragonflies weren’t up yet, so we had to travel by foot over the forest floor to the place our Light went out.
“Holding up alright, Brayleigh?” Luciana asked from a few inches above me. Her daisy petal skirt was stained with wet trails of green and brown earth, but her amethyst eyes sparkled with amusement. She was loving this.

“I miss when our kind had working wings,” I groaned...

Project Status:

Querying. No bites yet.

All of these covers are fake. I made them in Canva.

Shadows in the Stained Glass

The Prompt: A family visits a hotel without any mirrors.

The Story: In an attempt to reconnect, a family goes on vacation to an inn that prohibits any reflective surfaces from entering the building. The innkeeper claims that this policy is due to the possibility of fire from the reflected light through the antique stained glass; however, the children soon begin to suspect that something more sinister is the true cause.

Excerpt:

Elena groaned for the hundredth time in the three hours she’d been stuck in the car with her family. She fidgeted, propping her chin against her knee and gazing out the window, but she didn’t see the autumn trees with fiery leaves or the deers darting through the woods. She only saw her reflection and tugged at the blonde curls piled in a knot on the top of her head.

Jackson told her it looked like a pile of spaghetti when he slid in the back seat beside her, and she hadn’t spoken to him since, but he didn’t care. He was lost in the fictional world of the Overlook hotel despite the fading daylight and smudges marking his glasses.

“I’m sick of that sound,” Sam snapped, sparing a moment to glare at the reflection of her daughter in the sun visor’s mirror. Elana glared, but Sam went back to brushing mascara over her eyelashes.

“You should get used to it. We’re going to hear it a lot this weekend,” her husband grunted from the driver’s seat before forcing his voice into a high, cheerful tone that annoyed everyone except Jackson. “Even though I’m not sure why. This weekend is gonna be great!”

Project Status:

Revising to make it shorter so that it fits within more magazine submission guidelines.

Novels

A Glass Heart & Gilded Ash

A Cinderella retelling set in a regency inspired fantasy world, but the ball the hunger games style arena battle where the tributes have to survive dragons, not each other.

This story stands alone, but I would love to write other retellings in the same universe.

Opening Paragraph:

Fire ripped past me as I dove through the bars of the gilded cage and rolled over the stone ground. Heat nipped my ankles. My skin burned, and my trousers singed as a sickening thud twisted my stomach. The smell of burnt flesh wafted around in the swirling smoke.

Project Status:

I'm working on a Revise and Resubmit for an interested agent. I also have a few other agents waiting for the full once my revisions are complete.

All of these covers are fake. I made them in Canva.

Reborn

An orphan who discovers he's a necromancer is adopted by the king and serves in the army until he accidentally brings the wrong person back to life.

I do intend for this to be the first book in a trilogy. I have a rough draft for book two, and an outline for the third.

Excerpt:

“Do something about the birds, please. We wouldn’t want any of these men reborn without eyes or entrails,” I said as I untangled a corpse from the rest in the pile of bodies. It was cold, stiff, and heavy. The lifelessness sent a chill down my spine, but I would fix that soon.

Project Status:

Letting this one sit while I work on some other things.

All of these covers are fake. I made them in Canva.