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Summary: Charlotte Marks is the most popular girl in all of Riverdale High. She has a best friend named Jane, a handsome boyfriend named Michael and an adoring sister named Elizaveta. She lives in an affluent neighborhood and is in the top of her class. The world is at her fingertips. Until she walks in on Michael and Jane kissing--and it's been going on for weeks. Charlotte can't believe it, so she gets in her newly acquired car and jets off to the shiny streets of Hollywood. Using her charm, smile and low cut Zac Posen dress get her in to the hot nightclub. The music is loud, the drinks are forthcoming and sitting in a private booth is Tom Legend. Tom Legend is the hottest singer ever. And Charlotte is photographed kissing him and that photo is pasted to the front of every magazine by the next day. Everyone at school thinks she cheated on Michael and not the other way around! Charlotte doesn't know what it means but it can't be anything good.

Inspiration: I’m a big fan of the YA section, I could probably live there if Barnes & Noble would let be bring a sleeping bag in to the building. But, what I’m not a big fan of is seeing the same type of character over and over again. Lonely, isolated, quite, kind, pretty but doesn’t know it. You get the picture. While these characters are usually relatable, I was done with it! I wanted to read a book that was totally and completely different from my own life, I wouldn’t be reading if I didn’t want a little break. So, I came up with the idea of a pretty and popular narrator. Charlotte’s snarky and sarcastic attitude came easily, her popularity and problems a little less so.

(12,000 words)

Summary: Elisa and her family took her mother's death hard. Brian acted out and didn't accomplish much with his life, Meg estranged herself from the family as much as she could and dove in to school, their Dad did his best. As for Elisa, she got depressed and got anxiety and insomnia. She got the short end of the stick. In order to cope with the insomnia she goes for walks at night, she likes the quiet. One night she runs in to Derrick. Derrick is cute and mysterious, but she tries not to think too much of him; he's just a stranger of the night just like her. When Elisa goes off to college she's hoping that things will get better. No one there will know who she is or what she has gone through and when she gets there things start to appear that they will get better, until she runs in to Derrick again. Her roommate Thea tells her not to talk to him but she can't help it, Derrick might hold the key to getting her mother back.

Inspiration: Merit Antares once said, “The only cure for writer’s block is insomnia.” I don't know who he is, but he might be on to something. For days on end I would watch the evening hours turn to midnight and midnight turn in to the wee hours of the morning, understandably I was a bit aggravated and I wished that there was at least a logical reason behind my insomnia, and then bing! like a text message from a mysterious stranger the idea hit me. What if someone couldn’t sleep because, if they did, their soul would be sucked out of them by a demon. (With thoughts like that, it’s no wonder I have sleeping problems.) While the idea has morphed in to something a little bigger and more involved the main points of demon and insomnia are still strong in the first draft of this manuscript.

(50,000 words)

Summary: Naomi had much bigger plans for her summer vacation. She was going to sit by the pool and work on her tan, highlights and single status. Things didn't go as planned though. She gets stuck going to some Podunk town hundreds of miles away from her ocean side city. She thinks it's going to suck until she starts having weird dreams. And not caffeine withdrawal dreams, because these dreams aren’t like any other. Dreams about a boy, dances in a barn, white dresses and the Civil War. And that ghost town her parents dragged her to, there’s something about the house in the town that reminds her of the events in the dream. When she does some research on the place there's some weird coincidences with the family that lived there. And when things couldn’t get any weirder she starts seeing things.

Inspiration: The story of a ghost town was inspired by a news article about—you guessed it, a ghost town. I didn’t even get through the article before I started writing the story of Naomi. I was 15,000 words in when I realized it needed a rewrite and from there I started my first ever drastic rewrite of a manuscript. Characters were cut, names and placed were changed and my short Valentine’s Day story was starting to become the beginning of a full-fledged novel. This story contains my first ever period piece, and possibly has caused the most frustration due to all the research for the Civil War era.

b>(10,000 words)
Summary: Brigitte Cooper had a good childhood. Upscale Denver home, loving parents and all the attention in the world. Then her brother Andrew was born and she became a babysitter and just an extra mouth to feed. Most families learn to adjust to a new sibling, but Andrew was diagnosed with Autism which makes everything a million times harder. Her parents think she should just learn to “deal with it” but Brigitte doesn’t want to. Brigitte just wants a little positive attention and just a little freedom. She finally gets up the nerve to ask to go to the school dance, but instead of getting the okay she gets sent to a group therapy for teen with siblings with disorders. Not exactly what she was aiming for. And yeah, maybe the cute guy that sat next to her was a nice surprise but Brigitte wants normal! Then she meets Devyn, who might not offer her normal but he might offer her something else. Going down the delinquent path might get Brigitte a little attention, but is it really the attention she wants—and is it really going to help her and Andrew?

Inspiration: While traits of Andrew are taken from my brother the emotions Brigitte feels are highly exaggerated from what I feel, and her actions are completely fabricated. Don’t worry. This story is being written because with the explosion of autism in the modern day family there seems to be an extreme lack of it in the YA fiction novel. I feel underrepresented and I know I can’t be the only one. While the journey I took with my brother isn’t exactly fodder for a fictional tale I knew a story of a girl who was less excepting of her autistic sibling would be intriguing to read and more challenging to write. And who doesn’t love a challenge?

(24,000 words)