Aethra has shapeshifting abilities and a life with an excess of responsibility and expectation. When circumstances force her to leave her home at the bottom of the sea and move to surface-land, her ability is no longer an asset; she must struggle to keep it hidden from a greedy king that would kill for her power.

A SEPARATE GRACE is a middle-grade coming-of-age fantasy novel set in an ancient second-world. Complete at 68,000 words, it centers on Larke, a twelve-year-old girl who lives in a city under the sea. Grounded in myth and legend, it is an inversion of the Selkie myth.

Larke is different from everyone else she knows. She doesn’t have gills. Stuck in a city of crystal domes on the ocean floor, her life in Charis is limited. Trapped inside, day in and day out, she is stifled by constraints and extra sensitive to repetitive sounds. Her frustration makes her act out, but her priest encourages her to focus on beginning an apprenticeship after her upcoming graduation.

When she discovers something that will allow her to breathe underwater, she thinks she is on the edge of freedom, but city leaders refuse to accommodate Larke’s differences in the graduation test. When it looks like she will be held back for another year, she acts out by removing the clappers from the city bells, but instead causes the bells to fall. Her action damages the city-center and almost kills her sister. She makes amends by giving up the resources she’d collected to create additional breathing potions for herself, but not everyone is ready to forgive.

A SEPARATE GRACE will appeal to readers of SARA AND THE SEARCH FOR NORMAL by Wesley King and THE TAIL OF EMILY WINDSNAP by Liz Kessler.

Sent on a mission by The Raven of the Slain, Ylva must cure the world of destructive paradox, but she never imagined the years she’d spend trying and failing to unravel fate’s snarl. After attempting hundreds of variations, reliving her life only to fail, Ylva decides her next attempt will be her last.

With time reset one last time, despair makes Ylva reckless, but motivation to succeed arrives as an image of her child thriving in a future she’s never seen. She may have already taken too many wrong turns for this new timeline to have a chance. She must enlist help from old friends and once-husbands who don’t know her yet in this timeline and find a way to save the world and bring herself peace.

After failing to win the position of apprentice to the chieftain of her tribe, Ylva put years of study into retraining as a seer. If all went well, she’d travel to the high king’s stronghold and undergo a magic initiation ritual, giving her the power to become chief seeress of her people.

But all did not go well.

Ylva’s parents refused to let her travel with them. Now the only way to fulfill her dreams is to cross the mountains alone. She’ll join other seers at the stronghold and expand her powers. But she has to get there first, and a being more dangerous than Ylva could imagine sleeps in the heart of the mountains. He is the Valravn, The Raven of the Slain, and something just woke him up.

When I said I wanted to write, folks told me to “write what you know.” And then they said, "No, not like that."

Paralyzed by PTSD after a violent assault, Charlotte is a prisoner in her own home, haunted by her nemesis, a front door that she can't bring herself to open. Hounded by a family that values appearances over her well-being, she must navigate their callous judgments and her own crushing fear. Finding an unexpected parallel in the world around her, Charlotte must choose whether to succumb to the darkness or find a new way out.

Content Warning:

This is a short story about an agoraphobic with PTSD trying to go outside. Includes elements of recovery from severe trauma with a toxic family shown on screen. References to violence, rape, and assault are mentioned but not shown on screen.