The Hell Witch’s WIPs (2021)
Dear god, my last WIP list is woefully out of date. There have been some Significant Changes to quite a few of my novels over the past year I should probably rectify by now in my main listing...
In order of completion/priority:
Heaven’s Tiny Daggers: Finn Begby and her two best friends were there the night rockstar, Aster Maddox went up in flames on stage. Although his death is not a lasting one, it takes Finn years to finally face the trauma of what she saw. The best way she knows how to heal is to start a band. What she doesn’t expect is to catch the attention of Aster himself. As Heaven’s Tiny Daggers rises to fame, new opportunities open up to Finn and the rest of the band. Namely, a prestigious spot at a New Orleans retreat where folk music legend, Helene Saturnine fosters up and coming artists. Once in New Orleans, however, the girls and their fellow guests find that La Bellemort mansion is far more than it seems, morphing to their every whim. But there’s something demonic lurking in the shadows of their summer home, one keen to pick them off one by one, and the house seems only eager to warp to their attacker’s needs…
Status: Currently completing final draft before sending it off to query in 2022.
Time, Regardless: In the small Southern California town of Santa Perdita, Marnie stalks the streets at night to exact her own form of vigilante justice. When a popular teen drama rolls into town to shoot its latest season, girls start showing up dead, each one a year younger than the last. Marnie’s convinced the charming love interest and his unruly entourage have something to do with it, but she can’t prove it all on her own. Enter Corvin Lockwood, mortician and resident bad boy, living alone in the mansion on the hill. Nothing spooks her more than his home, said to be so haunted, no one’s ever successfully completed a renovation since it was originally built. But she’s willing to do just about anything to solve the murders, even face her darkest fears just to get a glimpse of the bodies Corvin preserves if they’ll lead her to the answers she seeks. What lurks in that house, however, is more than Marnie bargained for. There’s a reason she was once too afraid to set foot in the mansion, yet still so drawn to it over the years. The clock is ticking and Marnie must confront a past she’s denied all her life before the killer strikes again and innocent children die.
Status: Awaiting complete rewrite after previous query with a very different plot. (Watch this space for a potential new title.) Next up after HTD!
Haunt Your Murderers: It’s Victorian London’s best kept secret that Millie Marsette likes to collect young protegees to take under her wing. What no one knows is how she breaks them, and leaves them in the dust in favour of her next shiny new toy. Melusine Cutpurse and Andrina Calder know her patterns intimately, and know not whether to scrape their way back into her good graces, or seek revenge. Melusine: the leader of a drag troupe who uses her brothel as a front for her underground crime ring. Andrina: A travelling circus aerialist turned pirate forced to become captain of her ship after watching her lover walk the plank to her certain death. The pair of them are joined in an unlikely mission against a mad doctor, piling up bodies for his sick experimentations. They say he’s on the quest for immortality, but only one person can grant him that: the very woman who made Melusine and Andrina who they are, and dropped them just as quickly. As everyone’s schemes begin to unravel, it turns out, they’re all as bad as each other…
Status: Backstory written, awaiting a full first draft write up. Who knows when we’re coming back to this one...
Vampire Gatsby Novel: A magnetic pair of vampires pluck a girl from a roadside crash and her certain death. They bring her to their lavish mansion and help her transition as a newborn vampire in all the glitz and glamour of the roaring 20s. Cecily and Jory are well known for their extravagant parties. It’s here, their new protegee, Lena must learn to hunt. Meanwhile, they’ve promised her a shining new career on the Hollywood lot, where she catches the eye of a sadistic director with a penchant for deadly set designs. The underworld is at Lena’s feet, and she must decide if she wishes to use her new form to cull the most dangerous criminals from the city, or simply become one of them.
Status: To be written!
Moonage Daydream / Woodland Mechanicals: Originally a TRC next generation fic found here, the fresh rewrite opens with the disappearance of a newborn, found unscathed in a clearing in the woods. The only problem is… it’s not the same child. Years later, Violet Lewandowski knows something’s wrong with her. Something dark is trying to crawl out of her, but she doesn’t know what. She grapples with her paranormal identity alongside defending herself and her mother from her violent mob boss father, who holds their small Rocky Mountain town in the palm of his hand. Her only solace is with her best friends and neighbours, Sargent and Indie Hennessy, the precocious children of local art forgers. Together, the three of them navigate labyrinthine tourist traps and spooky forests in an attempt to understand their magical roots before the monsters in the trees can take them as their own. No one knows for sure what goes on in the forest, but as they say... as above, so below...
Status: Original draft posted on AO3, to be adapted into an original novel. Like Regardless, the plot of the latest draft is very different from the original. Vampire Gatsby and this one are constantly vying for my attention depending on my mood and neither’s won out yet...
Circus Noir Novel: Based on true family history, a 1940s gang holds up an LA card club. The ensuing shootout leaves a policeman dead and a mobster brutally wounded. The latter escapes with the aid of a circus bareback rider. Generations later, the mobster’s descendants venture through the most dangerous corners of the city in search for the truth that kept their family so tight-lipped about their mysterious great-uncle for so long. A whimsical road trip quickly turns into crashing a mob funeral and leaving the children in needle-strewn library stacks, all in the name of chasing the truth, one nickle-fed newspaper photocopy at a time...
Status: Just dabbling for now, but I’ve thought about fictionalizing my family’s worst-kept secret (and most insane true story!) for years at this point...
Feel free to ask me about any of my WIPs!