Magic is unnatural. Forbidden.
That’s the tagline for my secret project. I’m excited to share a sneak peek, afterall, I’ve been working on it for close to 25 years. Yes, 25 years. It’s gone through many iterations, including going back and forth from a trilogy to a duology and back again, a main character going from being a cat to a teenaged boy, and various POVs. The working title is Unity and it is a dark science fantasy. Here’s a brief blurb:
Seventeen-year-old Ella radiates a magic she can’t control. When people see her, they forget her and what they were doing. She exists on the outskirts of society, observing, always searching for answers to why she is the way she is.
Her already unusual life is turned upside down when a magical army invades and she comes face to face with the evil force behind it. He gets close enough to touch, yet goes by as if she were invisible. But his companion, Kay, a boy about her age, sees her. These encounters send her fleeing to the north where her mother was born, believing no one knows she exists.
Except for the boy.
When Ella and Kay meet again, they discover her affliction protects him, too. Conflicted, Kay chooses to escape with her. They set out across a thousand miles of wild, unknown land, hoping to find safety in the north. Kay’s master relentlessly pursues them, finding ways to thwart Ella’s affliction until he finally finds them. If she is to survive, and save Kay, she’ll need to transform her affliction into their salvation.
Yeah, needs work, I know, but hopefully gives a sense of the story.
Around 2019, I realized the reason I struggled so much with the story was I didn’t have the skills I needed to tell it the way I wanted to. So I went for my MA in creative writing and used the story as my thesis project. That got me about a third of the way through book 1.
Not satisfied, I went on to get my MFA and again used this story as my thesis project. It was quite the journey, with many more changes, but in the end I completed book 1. The last quarter of it, I wrote at my father’s bedside in the hospital and in the week after he died (that was the deadline for submitting my thesis and graduating on time).
It was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. And also one reason I haven’t gone back to finish revisions, or to complete books 2 and 3. It’s been over a year now and I’m finally ready to get working on it again, as soon as I finish my current project.
Recently, I opened up the file and started reading it. It reminded me how much I love this story, in part because it was inspired by my daughter. I started telling her Ella’s story on long car drives. Now grown, my daughter is a wonderful storyteller in her own right (check out E.R. Zanes). Also in part because the story is now inextricably tied to my father, a consummate storyteller and undoubtedly where I got whatever talent I have.
As Archyens, I wanted to let you see into Ella’s world before it’s released next year. It is the story that means to most to me. You know that because it drove me to spend years of my adult life back in school!
So Archyen, meet Ella. She’s happy to meet you.