A former teenage author turned twenty and her stabs at writing life and living to write.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

The Bane of My Existence, The Thorn in My Side, The Pebble in My Shoe, The Fly in My Ointment (AKA... my book)

I can hardly stand it any longer. It's tortuous, day and night. I can't stop thinking about it. I can't stop dreaming about it. I actually have devised a world in which I cannot escape. I would love to have someone else consider my novel genius and offer to publish it for me... sure! But the chances of that actually happening are so slim I can hardly stand to think about the possibility anymore. What should I do? Well, the simplest thing to do would be to forget about it entirely. And believe me... I've tried.

I am literally haunted though by my book. It occupies a great deal more of my thoughts than I would like to admit. I love my characters, so much that it's agonizing to have to keep them secret. I want to share my story, for it is my story that I tell. I've written simply a fantastical morph of the life that I've seen, with some embellishment (if you know me, you see already I am so good at that in real life).

This is a rant and nothing more. But I honestly can't stand the way my book stalks me. It will be something I will always love. I know that. But until I can share it, I don't think I'll ever be able to just let go. (I already know that's what a lot of people expect me to do. They think because I'm young that this is a phase. It is no phase. They are polite sure, but most (even many in my family) don't really believe I have a shot at the presses. And maybe they're right...)

Discouraged? Yes, but mainly because I recently received a rejection note saying this agent just wasn't drawn to the sample pages she requested. She dismissed me through boredom. I'm just trying to rebound now. I really do feel like one of those old single women who at the age of sixty nine lives with twenty cats. I'm talking about the women who always put themselves out there, but are constantly rejected. No one wants them. That's what it feels like to be in the "slush pile" (another idiotic agent/author/publisher/writing world term). Goodnight, America!!

Jhevalia

Lesylia Grey was eight years old when her mother sent her running through a dark forest all alone. The next morning found Lesylia asleep in a meadow and her parents dead in their car from a supposed crash. No one could explain it and no one tried.

Now, on the brink of her eighteenth birthday, Lesylia is being thrown to one more relative and returning to the place where it all happened, the cold landscape of a small Alaskan town. But living in the darkness takes its toll.

Dreams begin invading her mind, presenting five oddly dressed beings that, like her, all have sparkling silver eyes. Reality though will take a turn when her dreams come to life, revealing a magical race, one to which she belongs, one from which her parents ran away, and one that now needs her help.

With the five others in her coven, Lesylia must come to an understanding of the power that rests in her blood, the reality she sees in her dreams, and the dark secret of her mother’s locket. Lesylia must lead an army into Jhevalia to fight against The Order, her parents’ murderers, to save her own mortal world from complete annihilation.

But as they near the battleground, Lesylia’s psychic power foretells the brutal slayings of every member in her coven and she is left with a choice. What would she be willing to sacrifice to save them?