Books

The Devil You Know

urban fantasy (standalone with trilogy potential)
STATUS: Revised and ready to rock
Complete at: 97, 500 words

Trinity Graves has only ever allowed herself to feel connection with one person: Lucifer, the anonymous insurgent mastermind who leaves police baffled. He’s the only one whose genius with DMPs rivals her own. In their alternate-world Toronto, touching a gaseous DMP (or “daimon”) instantly makes a person’s belief come true for a short time.

Graves doesn’t care about the DMP “safety” legislation that restricts what Canadians are allowed to believe, or that Lucifer is willing to kill to fight it. All that matters is showing her nemesis that she’s the best. To prove it, she’ll hunt him down. And she isn’t going to let a new babysitter from the Compliance Office stop her.

Daniela Meyer, aka Lucifer, is running out of time to get rid of Graves before the Fallen’s next attack, and going undercover as her adversary’s new compliance officer is the perfect way to figure out how. At least, it’s perfect until she finds herself fascinated by the prickly prodigy who actually understands what Lucifer’s doing with daimons.

Worse, the Fallen aren’t the only ones with murderous plans. Meyer must find out who, exactly, is behind the deadly countermovement to Lucifer’s fight for freedom, all while staying one step ahead of Graves. The closer the two get to the answers they need, the closer they grow to each other. But can Graves count on the first person she’s learned to trust, or will Meyer choose the Fallen’s mission over the most incredible woman she’s ever known?

The Mentalist’s Sister: A Ghost Story

SFF novella
STATUS: In revision
Estimated length on completion: 35, 000 words

The only thing the twelve-year-old ghost knows for sure is that she’s dead. She can’t even remember her own name. Her memories are gone, and the only way to get them back is to fulfill her ghostly duty by helping the target of her haunting: Riva Reik, a grouchy elderly woman who can move objects with her mind.

In her youth, Reik was known as the Mentalist, and with her partner, the super-strong Lady Goliath, she used her power to fight crime. But Reik’s sister, Elkie, used her own psychic gift of hypnotism to lead a life of evil and corruption. Before she died, Elkie was pursuing the ancient artifact that bestowed these supernatural powers on all three women. Together with Reik’s young grand-nephew Sy, the ghost must help Reik track down the artifact before Elkie’s old cronies get hold of it. But to do that, she’ll have to figure out who she is… and what terrible things she may have done when she was alive.

The Adventure of the Runehurst Sort

adult SFF standalone
STATUS: Finally writing–woo hoo!
Estimated length on completion: 80, 000 words

At Runehurst University, every student from undergrad to postdoc knows that the Grammar builds power from the contrast between strange and normal. In daytime, the campus is a bastion of “normalcy”–at least, as defined by its long-dead, white, male founders–but, at night, top students and faculty transform into dangerous creatures of Wild Magic, and the unwary can disappear for good.

But some students don’t fit in by night or day, like graduate scholar Courage Hawke. Courage can’t afford to let her guard down at any time at Runehurst. To stay in the respected theoretical-studies track, she must hide her ability to hear others’ worst thoughts, a minor psychic gift that would shunt her directly to training meant to mould those with natural Grammar abilities as study subjects and aides for the more intellectually endowed.

That’s part of the reason why Courage wants nothing to do with her new lab partner, Thomasina “Thrasher” Thorley, a celebrated applied-track whiz who wields a traditional dueling sword to shape the power of the Grammar physically. How could someone who hasn’t ever struggled to win others’ respect understand anything important? But when a rogue Work that Courage created to try to rid herself of her secret begins killing indiscriminately at all hours, she and Thrasher must work together to find out who released it and how to stop them. Their investigation will pit Courage against Runehurst’s feral midnight creatures, a host of dangerous student rivals, and her own arrogant ex. To survive, she’ll have to confront the assumptions she’s made about Runehurst, about Thrasher, and about herself.

The Ghost Project

MG fantasy (standalone with series potential)
STATUS: Shelved post agented submission (2019-2020)
Complete at: 46, 000 words

Something strange is going on at the Fort Springs army base. Twelve-year-old Sam bites off more than she can chew when she witnesses her best friend Drew disappear into green light in the nearby woods. As Sam chases after clues to get him back, she realizes that the whole town is hiding something.

With help from her little brother, Marty; the suspicious new kid, Rajya; and the two ghosts who haunt her attic (seeing ghosts and having constant nightmares is normal, right?), Sam will unravel Fort Springs’s secret past. But when nobody is who they seem, who can she trust to watch her back? To rescue Drew, Sam will have to untangle the web of lies… or end up “disappeared” just like him.