Introducing my WiP
My work in progress [WiP] is a paranormal novel full of mystery, suspense and romance, set in a coastal town in the south of England. It’s essentially a gender-flipped Sleeping Beauty meets Beauty and the Beast/Stephen King’s Rose Red, with a weird romance element. While I’ve classified it as ‘paranormal’, I think it really falls under the weird fiction subgenre category.
There are things in the town that defy definition and explanation; The Crows itself is a main character; the rule of three runs through the novel as an implicit theme.
Wattpad Cover by Maya StarlingThere’s room for science fiction crossovers, there’s a few subverted horror tropes (for example, the crypt is one of the friendliest and most restful parts of the house), and there are ghosts, ghouls, psychics and old secrets galore.
The first draft of the novel was written straight to Wattpad, and has attracted about 13,000 reads to date. It’s a conglomeration of things that were rattling around in my head at the time, including my own financial situation, previous unfinished projects, short story ideas that needed expansion, and characters that didn’t have homes.
In this first draft, I felt Carrie was a rather flat, Mary Sue character who is defined more by her financial struggles and love interests than by any key personality traits. In the extensive re-writes, I give her more challenges, flesh out her character and work from the personality type test I made her do. It turns out that she’s an ISFJ, so that enabled me to flesh out her development and backstory more convincingly.
I’m now in the editing stages of the rewritten version, which will be published in 2019 across various platforms.
I’ll be tweeting about this during September via the #OrganicWiP #AuthorConfession #SensationalWiP #WiPquisition tags, with some corresponding Instagram pics and Pins!
