Melanie
Billings
Senior
Acquisitions Editor
Whiskey Creek
Press
The "Witches" is my first YA novel and it's been in the works for a very long time. I mean you can do only so much between writing thrillers, romance and suspense; working full-time and taking care of the family. It's science-fiction/fantasy and the plot synopsis is:
Winter Stars: The Witches of Calamora
YA high magic-fantasy 76,000 words
Thirteen year old Kitaya doesn’t remember living anywhere
else but inside the great and forever-changing messy yard that is encircled by
a massive wall. Her teachers call it the Calamora Fort. She calls it a home but
her friend, Joshua, calls it prison. What the jungle tribes call it depends on
whether the frontier gods allow them to see it or not. She knows her parents
died when she was a baby, but not who they were, where they came from and that
they were murdered.
Her family consists of four hundred and forty three old,
bald women with silver eyes and Joshua, two years her senior. The Treetop Witches
seeded Kitaya’s mind with kernels of their magic when still an infant. Chances
were that nothing would happen, but Kitaya surpassed all expectations. Joshua,
however, is an average human boy who is turning into a young man. He too is an
orphan but he has never cared much about finding out his roots. The childhood
playmates have grown up and lately they like to argue far more than play games.
They also don’t make up with just a hug but also a kiss. It is the most
dangerous situation that the Witches have ever dealt with.
When Kitaya finds out that the Witches have started to erase
Joshua’s memories and seed his mind with new ones that would not reveal their
existence, she is angry. Why can’t she have dreams of her parents too? But when
a malicious Witch who is scheming to become the new leader of the Order, lets
it slip that the girl’s teachers have identified her as the seed of a new magic
order the teenager realizes that she will never leave the fort in the middle of
the jungle on a dusty little world on the Rim, while Joshua is being sent away.
She can’t stop her teachers from taking away the boy she
loves. Her magic is not strong enough. She pleads with them to at least leave
Josh the memories of her and their time together. When they refuse, she decides
to put a twist in their plan to send Joshua to his kin in the human colonies.
All she needs to do is steal his dormant body, hide it with her personal energy
cloak and float it through the jungle to intercept the human recon party that
finally came after thirteen years to see why a once thriving trading world has
all but disappeared off the star charts.
She is not afraid of the predators that live in the jungle.
She has learned to take over and subdue their animal instincts. What she
doesn't know is that a time-quake has produced an alternate past. There is a
whole new set of predators in the jungle and none of them take prisoners.
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The Whiskey Creek Press/Wee Creek Press will publish the novel in e-book format but there is a trade paperback option, tough the author must commit to purchase 50 copies. Some might think of this as a catch, but I always buy at least 30-50 hard copies form the publisher, at discounted author's price, to use in my marketing promotions. Goodreads, for example, won't allow e-book format give-always though for the life of me I don't understand why. Flats are a great way to reward your reader and infinitely cheaper to mail out.
Just the other way I was mailing out books from my last contest, trade paperbacks of course, and the one to India cost me nearly $30 to mail out. Considering the e-book retails on Amazon for $6.99 and in hard copy for $14.99, the mailing is a highway robbery.
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