Pitch
Weary of training orphans to fight monsters, Jane leaves Lowood to experience the safe, straightforward life of a governess. Unfortunately, home houses an elusive monster of its own.

Genre
gothic fantasy

Vibes
dark, classic, mythical

Status
50% rough draft

Currently
drafting the house party section

Wordcount
104,532

Plot
polishing off

Worlbuild
polishing off

Characters
fleshing out

Opening Excerpt
The fresh graves in the schoolyard drew new horrors: when the mists were thick enough, the water-spirits left the river and swam through the foggy air, needle-like teeth bared and webbed fingers groping, to sing cold eulogies and beckon to us if we looked out from the windows. One girl,—who had until then fought the curse in her lungs and presented some hope for the medical attendant that at least one of her charges might overcome the disease and make a recovery—died suddenly in the night, and a horrible rumour spread among the other inmates of the sick-ward until it reached us on the outside: that her illness had not been of the same kind as the others, that even the cats, with their cursed hunger for the life-breath of the young, avoided her bedside; that she had been killed by a different creature, and that blood had been upon her pillow.

A day after her corpse had been laid to rest among the graves at the far end of the schoolyard, we saw the earth had been disturbed above her coffin, and after that we sometimes, in the evenings, saw her beneath the trees, or in the garden, thinner than in life, red-eyed and hungry, waiting for one of the unwary living to step into the cold night air.

Pitch
When Natalie transfers to a different campus of her university and starts hanging out with an insular little club, she doesn't expect her world to fill up with werewolves, vampires, and shapeshifters. She thought she'd be worried about her senior thesis, not about disentangling herself from an incomprehensible and wildly dangerous game between immortal monsters.

Genre
urban fantasy

Vibes
queer found family, humorous ensemble cast, grief and growth, the real family was the monsters we turned into along the way

Status
50% rough draft (first setup), 10% rough draft (new setup)

Currently
rewriting the partial draft to go in a new direction ow that I have a sense of the plot

Wordcount
89,100

Plot
assembling the bones

Worlbuild
building out

Characters
polishing off

Opening
It’s the first day of classes and I am, once again, walking into a new school. I had thought college would be the end of that depressing lifestyle. Four years of the same campus, the same mascot, the same people. Enough time to bother owning a hoodie in the school’s colours. I might have a roommate, join clubs, earn a quirky in-joke nickname…from the vantage point of the stage at graduation (Northside High, green and white, go eagles) the possibilities had stretched into infinity. But here I am, three years later—three roommates, two majors, and one phone call later.

Mom tried to say she didn’t need anyone around, but I know she can’t drive herself to physical therapy for at least a few weeks after surgery, and I could tell Dad was doing his best not to sound relieved when I insisted I could as easily do the last year of my degree at the university’s local campus a few miles from their current location.

It’s kind of a bummer, but three years on one campus didn’t really turn into any kind of binding friendships or institutional loyalty, anyway. Once a transient loner, always a transient loner, I guess. Anyway, it’s no big deal. All schools are more or less the same. Classrooms that smell like old carpets and decades of exam anxiety, restrooms that smell like a soap store with plumbing issues, and cafeterias that haven’t forgotten that time a meatloaf burned to charcoal. College isn’t that different from high school, it turns out, and sticking around for a while just means you know the names of all the people in the cliques and can’t say “sorry, I’m new” if you get lost trying to find a class.

Pitch
The king of the damned never meant to abduct a human, but Summer isn't about to let a chance like this go to waste. She's going to search the entire underworld if that's what it takes to find her missing mother—but she might have to save it from unscrupulous necromancers before there's nothing left to search.

Genre
urban mythology

Vibes
Labyrinth meets Greek mythology, genderqueer Death, get in loser we're saving the underworld

Status
5% rough draft

Currently
piecing together miscellaneous scenes and writing a cohesive first chapter

Wordcount
6,650

Plot
assembling the bones

Worlbuild
dreaming up

Characters
dreaming up

Opening
One moment she was on the sidewalk, the next something had caught her around the waist. Her feet lifted off the ground, and with a roar of engine, she had been carried away. For a moment she flew free, and then the momentum dragged her into a car. She landed, undignified, sprawled across a pristine leather seat, her legs thrown across an even more pristine lap. As she caught her breath, her eyes travelled up a sparkling silver waistcoat, past an extravagant crimson silk tie, to a sharp-boned white face. Mismatched blue and violet eyes—violet?—studied her from beneath perfectly-coiffured black hair which must have a fortune’s worth of product holding it in place.

“I beg your pardon!”

“Granted.” He nodded magnanimously.

She caught her breath and tried to right herself without touching the stranger—emphasis on strange—any more than necessary. He reached long arms to set her upright. Flustered, she tried to brush her skirt straight and to look away from his odd eyes.

The driver said, “Where d’you want me to drop her?”

The stranger withdrew an intricate pocket watch from his very extra velvet coat and, after a moment, snapped it back shut and said, “Nowhere. We haven’t the time.”

“Excuse me?”

“Of course.” He bowed, as much as he could without crushing his coat or ruining his extravagant hair in the car’s space.

She glared.

His smile bared slightly pointed teeth.

Pitch
Oliver Stapleton is looking into a dismal future until Dr Hendrik van Eyk engages him to tutor his two young wards. Oliver finds the twins charming. The problem is, he finds their guardian charming in an entirely differet way, and he's not sure Hendrik even sees him.

Genre
romance

Vibes
cozy, old-fashioned, Betty Neels if she wrote gay romance

Status
75% rough draft

Currently
doing specific task or writing specific thing

Wordcount
50,687

Plot
polishing off

Worlbuild
polishing off

Characters
polishing off

Opening
A miserable spring drizzle had formed a puddle exactly where the taxi stopped in front of the hospital, and the cab’s passenger, clutching a pile of textbooks and a battered leather satchel, did not quite avoid it. The hospital porter noticed one wet shoe—well made, but very scuffed, and the soles worn quite thin—as he directed him toward the children’s wing. The young man in question was a little above average height and slim, with sandy hair curled into mayhem by the damp wind outside and a smattering of freckles across a nondescript face. His expressive grey-green eyes, with their fine lashes, might have drawn attention under better circumstances; but at the moment, his armful of books and wet shoe, now beginning to squeak with every other step as he traversed the long corridor, drew any onlookers’ attention away from that one notable feature.

Ignoring a few odd looks from passing orderlies, he found his way to the children’s orthopaedic ward and paused just inside the doorway, bright eyes scanning the young inhabitants until a little voice said, “Mr Stapleton?”

Mr Stapleton’s expression changed to a curious one, both fond and, if one looked closely, apprehensive, as he crossed the room to the bedside of the child who had spoken.

“Hullo, Thomas. How are you?”

Thomas was a child of perhaps ten years, lying in a bed with one leg in a heavy plaster caste making an oversize bulge beneath the blanket, and he studied his visitor’s burdens with obvious distaste.

“The doctor said I’m very good,” he said, eyes not leaving the books. “He said I mustn’t read, though.”

“Did he, now?” Mr Stapleton set down his books. “I understand. You’ve got a very special kind of broken bone, and the infection goes right up to your brain, is that it?”

Thomas crossed his arms and jutted his little chin forward. “I won’t be made to study. I’m ill.”

“I should think you would be bored, sitting here in bed all day. Whatever else have you got to do?” Mr Stapleton’s voice didn’t betray the fact that he wholeheartedly agreed with the child. A child in hospital shouldn’t be made to study sums and grammar, but it was no use telling his employer that.

Mrs Pennyworth-Ross believed her son to be special—a belief not uncommon to mothers, but one which, in the case of Thomas, manifested itself in quixotic ways. After hearing her elaborate, one came to the contradictory understanding that he was of a delicate constitution not suited to hard work; that he was the cleverest of children; that he needed constant drilling in order to learn anything of substance. Mrs Pennyworth-Ross had a tendency both to spoil Thomas and to demand overmuch of him, but since she could not bring herself to blame him for anything, this conflict of sentiment invariably expressed itself in dissatisfaction with his tutor. If Mr Stapleton allowed his pupil some treat, he could expect to be brought before Mrs Pennyworth-Ross to account for his lax attention to the child’s education; but if Thomas appeared weary or caught the ‘flu, Mr Stapleton might likewise expect to be brought before her to account for having driven the child to illness with his unrelenting lessons. It was, to say the least, not an ideal situation, but beggars could not be choosers, as the young tutor reminded himself frequently, and, anyway, he had yet to find a comparable employment opportunity. He had thought he might take a few days to himself while his young charge lay in hospital with a broken leg that had become infected and needed some attention. Instead, Mrs Pennyworth-Ross had scolded him and sent him flying to the hospital, books in arm, to give the poor child lessons, injury or no injury.

It was the work of a few minutes to convince Thomas that he must engage with the lesson, but soon Mr Stapleton had the child wearily working sums. They had slogged through a half hour or more of miserable numbers added to, taken from, timesed by, and divided into each other, with Thomas growing increasingly irritable and Mr Stapleton increasingly bleak, when a deep voice behind the tutor said,

“Is a broken leg not punishment enough?”

Mr Stapleton’s heart leapt into his throat; surprise gave way immediately to the frustration that had been growing throughout the lesson, and his face flushed with indignation. He turned to see a very tall man in a white coat that seemed barely to contain his broad shoulders. Silver streaked his dark hair at the temples, and a pair of deep-set blue eyes observed the tutor with a cold gleam that held more threat than the bland tone of voice had.

The man’s absolute composure put Mr Stapleton on edge, and he snapped, “Thomas has a broken leg, not a—a brain trauma.”

“Thank you for your medical assessment,” the doctor said, coldly sarcastic. “But if you don’t mind, I’d like to perform my own, Mr…er…”

“Stapleton. Oliver Stapleton.” The name was delivered by force of polite habit, but delivered between clenched teeth. In fact, Mr Oliver Stapleton thought his blood might boil right over; however, as he could not muster a pithy retort, he simply collected his satchel and said, “I’ll return when the doctor’s finished, Thomas.”

Pitch
Two uncommon highwaymen after the same man—one to gain a fortune, the other to reclaim family honour, both to take revenge. Marrying each other? Well, it's a matter of expediency, not romance. At first, anyway.

Genre
regency romance

Vibes
regency caper, comedy of manners, marriage of (in)convenience

Status
15% rough draft

Currently
working out plot to keep drafting toward

Wordcount
18,775

Plot
following fairy-lights

Worlbuild
building out

Characters
fleshing out

Opening
The coach rattling beneath the trees bore the unmistakeable crest of Sir Robert Foxton, and as it travelled imprudently late, it was hardly a wonder that, as it slowed to pass a particularly narrow curve in the road, two horsemen should trot out of the trees, pistols drawn.

The driver, compelled to stop both by the threat of a shot and by a third horseman’s appearing directly in front of the four greys drawing the coach, reined in, and a highwayman approached each side of the carriage. Each put a cocked pistol in the window, and Sir Foxton thought better of reaching for his own long-barrelled duelling piece at the threat of a bullet each in his head and that of his lady.

Pitch
Jasper lives a double life: on land, a bored and titled heir to a lucrative trade company, but at sea, an infamous and unyielding pirate. His quest to find his missing father is complicated by the return of an old flame—Simon, as competent a pirate as Jasper and now in the employ of his murderous uncle—and the unexpected guardianship of Emmeline, the fifteen-year-old daughter of another sea captain, too clever for her own good and seemingly determined to become a pirate herself.

Genre
historical fiction

Vibes
gay pirates, political intrigue, a precocious teenager who is going to be the death of her new dads, friends-to-enemies-to-lovers romance

Status
10% rough draft

Currently
figuring out the logistics of Emmeline's abduction and drafting the first act

Wordcount
16,053

Plot
assembling the bones

Worlbuild
building out

Characters
fleshing out

Opening
The hot Caribbean sun beat down on the crew of the Isabel as they prepared to be boarded. The Spanish merchant galleon, loaded down with cargo, sat too heavy in the water to outrun the lighter pirate vessel. It had rapidly come within range of the English ship’s long guns, and now the Cabaret’s shots tore through the rigging and slammed into the Isabel’s sides. On the quarterdeck, Captain Garcia, sword in hand, shouted orders to his men, but he knew that there was no chance of sinking or evading the Cabaret as it bore down on its prey. The only hope was that the notorious Captain Blackmore would be in a lenient mood. The Isabel, as a merchant ship, fell outside the ruthless English captain’s usual prey; he was known to leave entire crews dead on ships bound to and from the penal colonies, but it was said he sometimes showed a merciful streak toward the crews of trade vessels. The Cabaret slipped nearer. Grappling hooks caught the galleon, and then the pirates, weapons in hand, swung aboard the Isabel, and the salty air rang with shouts and the clash of steel. Captain Garcia watched the fighting. His men were no soldiers; they were trained to sail a vessel across the Atlantic, not to fight for their lives against pirates, and though some of them had been in fights, and some had even been in wars, they were no match for men whose entire livelihood came at the point of a sword. They were quickly overwhelmed. Blood ran on the decks. Garcia peered through the haze of heat and gun smoke, searching for the infamous Captain Blackmore. From all the reports, he expected a bearlike man, bearded and bloodthirsty, a cutlas in one hand and a pistol in the other, and probably wearing a gauche hat with too many feathers. “Looking for someone?” said a low voice in correct but accented Castillian. Garcia spun to see a tall, tanned man in a billowing white shirt. The Caribbean wind whipped dark curls that hung to his broad shoulders beneath a faded red headscarf, and only a few weeks of rough stubble darkened the sharp jawline. He carried a sword in one muscled arm, and he swept a grandiose bow as Garcia stared. “Captain Jack Blackmore,” the Englishman said as he straightened. “At your service.”

Pitch
Alice's quiet holiday rapidly devolves into a whirlwind of invisible doorways, malevolent magics, and a false engagement to the most disobliging duke she's ever encountered. And Cecily's doing little better, between the dashing burglar about town, her aunt's unyielding attempts to see her married off, and a very expensive and fashionanble charm that simply doesn't seem to work. Genre
fantasy

Vibes
comedy of manners, fake dating, epistolary, regency magical romp

Status
rewriting (Alice's plot), 75% rough draft (Cecily's plot)

Currently
figuring out how to fit Cecily's plot into Alice's

Wordcount
188,731

Plot
filling in

Worlbuild
polishing off

Characters
polishing off

Opening
“But Alice, my dear, what can you be thinking?” Aunt Millicent’s shrill voice echoed down the hallway. “What kind of a pauper do you want those Mainland barbarians to think you are?”

Alice paused, one finger still caressing the spine of a poetry volume on her shelf, to call back, “I’m thinking, firstly, that the Mainland is full as civilised a province as the Isles; that, secondly, Lord and Lady Sinclaire surely maintain an ample staff; and that, thirdly, I don’t want to be troubled with an entourage. Fitzgerald will be sufficient, as she always has been.”

The staccato of Aunt Millicent’s heels crescendoed and then paused outside the door just long enough for the handle to turn. “Leaving the Isles is bad enough. Fitzgerald is barely sufficient as a hairdresser. What will you do if your coach is set upon by bandits?”

Alice said, “Fitzgerald, I forbid you to believe my aunt.”

The maid in question, a tall woman of indeterminate age dressed in silk breeches and calf-length grey coattails, turned a grave face toward her mistress, dark eyes betraying neither offence nor surprise; she nodded once and said, “Yes, milady,” and then turned her attention back to packing Alice’s quills neatly in the trunk.

Pitch
Phoenix Consulting's only human private investigators, Alex and Helen, go undercover in a cute little town full of young families, old houses, and a semiannual culling ritual, in which five humans at a time disappear overnight and are never seen again. They have six days, five potential victims, and one big secret that just might get them killed.

Genre
urban fantasy mystery/suspense

Vibes
suspense, humour, fake dating, and something very wrong in this little town

Status
overhauling

Currently
revising the series arc plot, adding context and concrete detail where too-enthusiastic cutting left scenes bare in the previous final draft

Wordcount
116,127

Plot
polishing off

Worlbuild
polishing off

Characters
polishing off

Opening
“Karlton, I don’t do serial killers, cults, or organised crime,” Alexander Dagan called as he stalked into Phoenix Consignment—Phoenix Consulting, technically, given it was five in the morning and the store part of the business didn’t open until nine. “And this looks like one of those. Maybe all of them.”

“Too bad.” Karlton appeared from the back room, a slight brown-skinned man in an immaculately tailored charcoal grey suit—which Alex thought was carrying the clean-cut ex-gentleman-spy stereotype to the breaking point. Nobody should look that professional before sunrise.

“Plus—”Alex tossed the manilla folder onto the counter and watched pages spill out across the painfully tidy rows of earrings beneath the glass top—“this job makes no sense.”

Karlton set his open laptop beside the still-locked register. “That’s why I’m sending you in.”

“No.” At his boss’s narrowed eyes, Alex dropped into one of the mismatched wooden chairs around a red-painted dining room table and said quickly, “I mean. Hear me out. You’ve got this town, right?”

“Suburban community.”

Alex kicked the chair back and propped the heels of his well-worn Docs up against the table. “Sub to what urban? Place is in the middle of nowhere, has its own grocery, gas station, clinic…point is, twice a year, five people disappear. Just—poof? And this has been going on for how long?”

“Six years.” The bell above the front door tinkled over Helen’s voice.

Alex flailed, one leg kicking as he forced the chair to fall forward instead of back.

“Sorry I’m late.” She raised a steaming mug in a toast toward the rose gold sunrise just beginning to gild the edges of antique wardrobes and that hundred-year-old pump organ they couldn’t seem to sell.

Alex fought for composure.

Pitch
Less than a year after the Port Haven job, Alex and Helen would love to take some time to gather up the pieces of themselves and each other, if their world could stop ending for five minutes together, but someone is abducting hybrid species, and Phoenix Consulting's two most human investigators seem to be directly in their sights.

Genre
urban fantasy

Vibes
action and introspection, humorous found-family with so much trauma

Status
overhauling

Currently
vivisecting the first draft to rewrite in line with a dramatically overhauled worldbuild

Wordcount
134,305

Plot
reassembling the bones

Worlbuild
polishing off

Characters
polishing off

Opening
“What’s this?” Helen slammed the file onto Karlton’s desk.

Karlton signed two more pages of a formidably sized document, closed the folder, and added it to the neat pile on the corner of his desk.



“Karlton.” Helen thumped the file with a fist.

He leaned back in his chair and gestured to Helen’s left. “I’m assuming you’ve met?”

A man sat a couple feet away, crisp and straight, dark hair trimmed to precise regulation length, face as serious in person as in the personnel file Helen had just tossed at Karlton. He had been sitting so still that Helen hadn’t noticed him, but at her glare, he stood and extended one black-gloved hand and said, “Michaels.”

“Scott.” She removed her hand as soon as politely possible from the uncomfortable rubber touch of his glove and turned back to her boss. “Karlton. I rescinded that request.”

Karlton picked up the file and held it out. “Dagan put in a request of his own.”

Pitch
Jack is the local justice god: incarnate, incorrigible, and in town to satisfy their curiosity about their most dedicated, most sceptical follower. Evelyn is the local detective, and she has no interest in an amateur sleuth who claims to be divine—or the increasing number of murders that Jack seems to be attracting.

Genre
fantasy, cozy murdery mystery

Vibes
lighthearted, romantic, found-family

Status
2% rough draft

Currently
writing the first murder investigation

Wordcount
2,893

Plot
filling in

Worlbuild
building out

Characters
dreaming up

Opening
“Who shall I say is calling, madam?”

“It’s Your Honour, actually, and I’m expected.”

The butler, mostly hidden behind the ornate front door of the grand old Carrington house, allowed only the slightest of doubt to show in his eyes at that assertion as he allowed the visitor entrance into the foyer. “I shall tell His Lordship that you’ve arrived, Miss…?”

“Jack Saint-Juste—and it’s Your Honour, not Miss.”

The butler allowed another modicum of scepticism in his expression, but he disappeared, straight-backed, through a nearby door.

The foyer, long unaccustomed to strangers and steadily declining into a kind of antiquated senecense, rose especially severely about this visitor, who, apparently unable to keep still, meandered about, a glittering green frock swinging about finely turned calves with every step, glossy dark curls bouncing from beneath a pert white cap, peering at antiquated paintings and tarnished furnishings through strikingly mismatched eyes—one glittering dark as obsidian and the other gleaming a nearly luminescent silver. Lord Carrington was almost certainly not the owner of the face they had come to see—a face which had been distinctly female, possessed of limpid blue eyes, rosebud lips, and a halo of golden curls—but they did feel fairly confident the supplication had originated in this house or one of its outbuildings.

Pitch
Lizzy has a certain future of bleak poverty unless she or her sister can land a well-off suitor—of which there are none in their small town—so she dances like it's the end of the world... until a pair of rich bachelors and a troup of ichormen move into the neighbourhood

Genre
fantasy

Vibes queer, lighthearted, enemies to friends

Status
1% rough draft

Currently
writing the first chapter and trying to figure out what Wickham's big crime is

Wordcount
1,193

Plot
assembling the bones

Worlbuild
building out

Characters
fleshing out

Opening
Every summer felt more like an ending. Lydia and Kitty danced like mad, as though every party might be the last one. Mary begrudged every engagement that drew her away from her books. Jane spoke seriously of the future, but never for long; Lizzy turned jokes with white-knuckled mirth. Ichor flowed in the Merrytown speakeasy, and if not so pure as the booze in the cities, it had the benefit of being as plentiful, and in less risk of raids breaking up a roaring good time, seeing as how the good Constable Jones was more often than not at the centre of the party himself.