What if mental illness isn't actually an illness? What if it's a marker-- a signal to anyone who understands what to look for? What if it makes you more powerful than you can imagine? Willow has panic attacks. Alastair is manic depressive. Mari hears voices in her head. None of them are what they seem. A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: "What if he wasn't sick, what if he was special?" Two years ago on the anniversary of my brother's death, I asked myself this question. I was sad and missing him and I suppose the side of me that's still a little girl, liked to imagine a world where my brother was invincible instead of a seventeen year old paranoid schizophrenic. His illness would eventually drive him to take his own life and even twenty years later, his losing battle with mental illness it is a defining part of my life. The idea for this story is outlandish-- what if being mentally ill actually made you a sort of superhero-- and it's NOTHING like my traditionally published books or my social media persona. In fact, when I finished this last year I filed it away and never really planned to put it out because it's so different. But then I realized that even if it was weird, I kind of loved the weirdness and since it's never been read by anyone or edited (yikes!) there doesn't feel like a ton of pressure for perfection. So this is it, an oddball idea that feels pretty special to me. I hope you don't think it's too terrible. ;)

Striving to secure her future through marriage, an heiress with a dubious pedigree begins to question who she truly is -- and who she wants to be. ***** Edith Shepley looks like a Wyrm. She takes after her father, whoever he was -- she doesn't know, and even if she cared to, it would hardly change things. She is a proper Folk lady, as sure as the sun rises, trained from the cradle to govern as Baroness of Ewert someday. And she knows her duty. A woman, now, at sixteen years old, the time has come for Edith to marry and beget Ewert's next heir. Journeying from country estates to city townhouses, through war-ravaged lands in between, Edith diligently considers suitor after suitor, some sweet, some baffling, some detestable -- and, suddenly, who her father was begins to matter very much. The more she sees of her mother's society, the more Edith questions whether she really is Folk, after all. And the more she's stung by its insults, its injuries and injustices, the more she wonders if she really even wants to be. But what is a proper young lady to do, if not her duty? Book One of The Unfinished Wyrm! Wattys 2017 "The Storysmiths" winner!