It will suprise none of my friends that I'm up at midnight or that I have to be at the airport tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m.. Neither will it surprise them that I have at least two more hours of work to do before I can go to sleep. (That would be two more hours AFTER writing this blog, which will be the last fun thing I do until my head finds the pillow.) Sleeping is something I do very well, but not nearly often enough lately. (Who are we kidding? I haven't slept since 1993.) I thought I was supposed to stop burning the candle at both ends once I became a "grown up." I'm supposed to know better. Well, maybe the problem is that I'm supposed to "no" better. I suck at "No."In fact my sucking at the word "no" is responsible for my writing "Coyote Run", a Young Adult story for the anthology WITCH HIGH.
Picture the scene: a writer's conference, a room full of editors, a need to make chit-chat. I say, "Hey, someone told me about the anthology you're doing. WITCH HIGH sounds fabulous."The editor says, "I have room. Would you like to write something for me?"
I say, "Nookay."
Doh! It's the extra letters in "no" that get me every time! In this case though I was thrilled to have over committed myself. In research the YA market, I found fabulous books and authors. Any reader will tell you that finding a whole herd of new authors is akin to hitting the lottery. I literally had to force myself to stop reading and write my darned story, "Coyote Run."
On the day we meet my young water witch she’s just finding out she is officially the last of her class without a familiar. Worse, if your familiar hasn’t bonded with you by the time you’re seventeen, it’s not going to happen. In two weeks she’ll be turning seventeen.
And so her misery and the schemes to find a familiar begin. Little does she know she’s about to have a much bigger familiar problem that will make NOT having a familiar seem like a piece of cake. Toss in a mysterious young man from Ireland, the emotional scars she carries from her mother’s suicide when she was younger, a new stepmother, one of the darkest familiars of the craft, and you have "Coyote Run."
I hope you enjoy! And maybe even discover some fabulous new authors.
Visit Debra's website or blog with her at Riding with the Top Down.
