Here is the list of my large projects which will be referenced elsewhere in the blog, starting from the most recent to the oldest at the bottom. The modality varies, half of the projects being graphic novels/manga and the other half being novels. For more information, check out My Mental Breakdown.
Call Forth the Moonlight
2023
Doctor Alister Henry has gotten nowhere in his academic career thanks to his favorable position on magiq, which opposes the Technocratic, industry-minded government. When he loses his position at Ravensbourne University, a mysterious opportunity in the country presents itself that allows him to bond with a gryphon named Pax. But Pax is a prisoner of its owners, and when the De Falco siblings break Pax out of jail, Alister comes along for the ride. He and the siblings form an unlikely alliance to keep magiq safe — and it doesn’t hurt that Alister is secretly a magiqon, able to utilize magiq himself. In this standalone novel, magiq is sacred, and love is the most powerful magiq of them all.
The Heartwood Trilogy
2022-2023
Ever since quiet, bookish Andrew Vidasche made the red-eyed faerie bleed, the Folk over the city in Lilydale have been slowly driving him insane. Half-Fae lord Micah Stillwater feels Lilydale is always watching him, too, even though he’s trying his hardest to seem like a normal human. Throughout the three books in The Heartwood Trilogy, Andrew and Micah explore how to build their love and their lives around the magic-drenched bluffs of Lilydale with its dangerous but endearing Folk, facing down threats from family trauma, mental health crises, and greedy witches out to exploit Micah’s unique and powerful nature as he comes into his own lordship over Lilydale.
Deny Me, The Nightshade Boy published September 7, 2023
Rend Me, The Wayward Knight published January 26, 2024
Code: Compromised
2020
Imagine our modern world if demons could be harnessed for summoning using computer programming languages. The nerds would truly rule the world. Andrew Vidasche is the top Code Summoner in the world, and he’s been feeling increasingly paranoid. The Scripts he summons leave pieces of their darkness behind and they whisper things to him in the night. Even though he has his faithful Codey Ada to protect him from the others like her, he decides he needs to train a successor for himself. That’s where Micah Stillwater comes in. He’s an average student with a passion for Code Summoning – and also for his new teacher, Andrew. It’s comfortable and sweet when their love blooms, but they both have baggage and it isn’t long before danger is creeping closer. Micah and Andrew have to team up with Ada to confront Micah’s biggest Error yet – Peel, his childhood Codey, who is bent on destroying the master Code Summoner Vidasche.
To Trust a Dragon
2016-2018
When you’re a tattooed curatorial graduate student who’s been dating an alleged dragon for over a year, you expect a certain level of whismy in life. But for Noeli Corazon, a year of belieivng that her handsome, boyfriend Sivarthis is really a dragon starts to wear her down. Just as she breaks up with him, though, her younger sister Adriana is suddenly missing, and there’s evidence it was a dragon who took her. However, Sivarthis blames a former dragon lover for the kidnap, and Noeli convinces him to take her to his world to rescue her sister from a dragon who keeps humans as slaves. As they journey in his dangerous world together, Noeli must come to trust herself before she can have what it takes to trust a dragon.
Sun-Walking
2010-2013
Helios is a world with no sunshine, and even less prospects for women in society. On the eve of her graduation from primary school and a week away from her marriage to her betrothed, Lucienne Chantos finds herself wondering if she could ever be happy with the life laid out for her. On a whim, she decides to leave the city and journey to the Sun-Walker – the provider of the singular light sources for the whole city of Helios. Her decision is life-changing…and life-threatening. The Sun-Walker, a foreigner not taken by the strict laws of Helios, accepts Lucienne as his apprentice based on her talented eye, but the consequences for their actions send ripples through the rigid lifestyle of those in Helios.
The Sun-Walker and his illegitimate apprentice narrowly escape with their lives from Lucienne’s six months of training. They flee the city as exiles in the company of Lucienne’s loyal “dragon,” the Sun-Creature, Solveig. Spending eight months of asylum in the drastically different world of Agaar, Lucienne discovers that worlds and customs exist that are entirely unlike the ways of her homeland. Her journey into reconciliation with Helios is as important as the impact she has on the ways of her people.
With major feminist undertones, this vivid, action-packed fantasy explores what it takes to break out of the expectations of society and what is learned and lost along the way.
Cadence
2008-2016
In a house by the river, Cirrus and Jonas live under the tutelage of the enigmatic magician Solimin, thinking he had to be the strangest thing about their lives. But when they uncover the stony bodies of two kids and bring them back to life, all that they thought was true is challenged and uprooted. A world of jealous, vengeful element kings opens up before them. The four children are the children of the Ambassador of the Stars, a bitter woman named Cadence who was forced into her lonely position because of the wrongs of her slighted lover, the Sun King and black magician, Solaris. Cadence is out to bring the Forest King Syracrus and the River King Rycarieus to justice, for it was their feud over Syracrus’ love for Cadence’s oldest daughter, Cirrus, which sentenced her children to a 200-year-long magicked slumber.
In a complicated world with vivid, beautiful images, the players of this story must struggle to find where they belong.
Farewell, Fairytale
2009
When an injured wolf stumbles into Sophie Lemars’ back yard, her daydreaming mind becomes certain that he is part of her own fairytale. And he is – sort of.
The world he brings her into – Caelum, to be precise – is unlike her own in even the simple way of being home to a cyclops, a fiesty woman named Mena; Find, a British palm-sized talking dragon; and a vengeful magic-using detective out to make Sophie’s wolf pay for his theft.
But her prince charming, the cursed wolf Fyodor, is certainly not a prince and he’s only charming when he feels like it.
Not to mention, explaining an alternate universe or sudden absences that may or may not be voluntary to your high school classmates does not go over well. Sophie’s older sister, the rather uptight Elodie, does not seem too excited about Sophie’s discovery of Caelum, either.
Like a modern Beauty and the Beast or a cheekier fable, Farewell, Fairytale doesn’t really say goodbye to the charms of childhood imagination.
The Terror of Night (Redefining Evil)
2007-2012
Dealing with an oppressive chain of losses in the lives of Julian Evereaux and his family isn’t easy when they must accept the protection of Danyil Kaehn, a vampire that has haunted Julian’s memories for years. Confronting the dakness with Danyil means fighting to be spared from the bloodthirsty threat of a possessed, mentally disturbed vampire, and in this battle, old prejudices and fears must be overcome.
Rebels
2006-2007
Erik Atwaters is an ambitious, slightly unstable police sergeant � a vampire police sergeant, that is! He lives in a world that vampires and humans are simply two coexisting races. So when Erik�s half-vampire, half-human girlfriend gets murdered in a movement of escalating civil unrest, Erik becomes the central opposing force against a band of humans and vampires determined to exterminate the members of the population who are neither fully human nor fully vampire.
When he decides to abduct the witnesses to his girlfriend’s murder; his week-old son; a fellow police officer, the fiesty French woman Elodie; and his own closest friend and comrade, Andrew, he complicates his own role in the Rebels movement. His disappearance quickly attracts the attention of the Rebel’s leader, an angsty college student named Kaleb, who is bent on snuffing out Erik’s influence…maybe.
The story is set alternately in Boston and in a cabin in the snowy Appalachians. It features an expressive, passionate cast of characters. The “Good” and the “Bad” are fluid camps which many of the characters shift between throughout the story. You will be rooting for the bad guys just as much as the good guys, and by the end, you won’t care which side anyone is on.
Rebels is a story of sacrifice and ambition, of allies and enemies and the things in between, with a profound message about what it takes to make things happen.
Nikkei
2004-2005
When Shani Sato discovers that her precious housecat, Nikkei, has the ability to turn himself into a quasi-human, well, mostly she’s just mad he revealed this to her while she was in her bath towel. But the consequences for this discovery are greater than that, and Nikkei leads Shani and her brother Myoku into his dangerous past. Hunting him is the fearsome vampire Eripmav Kaehn, who blames Nikkei for the death of his father many years ago. It doesn’t make matters simpler that Nikkei’s half-sister, the half-cat, half-vampire Kyasai, has had a child with Eripmav’s little brother Alucard.
In this feverish, heartwarming story of loyalty and faith, Nikkei will capture your love till the last tragic scene in this four-volume manga.