You know that WIP I’ve been mysteriously alluding to for the past several months? Well, now it’s completely done, revised, edited, and about to enter the submission world, so I guess it’s finally time to stop holding it so close to my chest. So here it is.
THE EIGHTH GUARDIAN
All sixteen-year-old Amanda has ever wanted is closure—to finally know what happened to her dad. Unfortunately, that information is hidden behind layers of classified documents, so when a slot in a top-secret government training school opens up, Amanda jumps at it. She’ll keep her nose down, study hard, join the CIA, and earn the clearance codes she needs.
But then Amanda is plucked out of school before graduation, rechristened with the name Iris, and dropped into an organization she’s never heard of: the Annum Guard. It’s a team of highly trained operatives who have the ability to travel back in time and tweak the past to improve the present. Enhancement, not alteration—or so they claim. But the deeper she gets into the organization, the more she learns that the Annum Guard is keeping some very dangerous secrets. Secrets like why the Guard has always been made up of seven members and she’s number eight.
So now, on top of having to jump back in time for her missions—missions she’s questioning more and more, and missions that wreak havoc on her body (humans weren’t meant to time travel, after all)—she has to start digging for answers without getting caught.
Because if she doesn’t—if she leaves the Annum Guard to its own devices—it won’t just be her life on the line. It’ll be an entire history’s worth of lives.
Some facts about this book:
- I had to write it three times before I got it right. The first draft was 70,000 words. The current draft clocks in a few words shy of 100,000.
- It’s had three titles. First was IRIS WAS A PUPIL, then came THE ANNUM GUARD and now we’ve settled on THE EIGHTH GUARDIAN.
- I spent waaaaaaay more time trying to puzzle through quantum physics and time travel theories than I needed to.
- I am more in love with this book than anything I’ve ever written.
- I still can’t type “EIGHTH” correctly on the first try.
Some pictures that remind me of the book:
Fingers crossed THE EIGHTH GUARDIAN finds the right home, but if it doesn’t for whatever reason, at the end of the day I have a book I’m damn proud of. And that totally counts for a lot of somethings.
Now you tell me, what are you working on these days?
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