The Future of Awake!

Awake! is a middle grade fantasy that I completed some time ago. I searched for an agent and entered it in several contests to no avail, but I did gather some useful feedback during the process, which resulted in an idea beginning to form as to how I could improve the story and try again. The big changes are to cut back on the number of different types of magical creatures and their related abilities as well as to decrease the number of characters, as cool as they are, to focus in on the important aspects of the story more purely. I have begun doing the necessary planning for making these changes, and I must say that I am pretty excited!

Here is my best guess of a description for the new version of the book, as things stand now:

Tentative Description for Awake!

Isa was a nymph—now she’s a ghost. She is desperate to find peace and move on to Blissful Nothingness, but she can’t remember why she died or why she’s still in Faetatica, a country where people are nothing more than test subjects for Empress Genna’s latest scheme. 

Nica, a frustratingly cautious little elf, is the key to Isa’s problem. She must be—the haunting magic wouldn’t have forced them together otherwise. If Nica can’t (or won’t) help her, Isa will slowly turn into one of those evil spirits that give ghosts a bad name.

When the haunting magic causes Nica and her (living) friends to be chosen for a mandatory Once In A Lifetime trip to Genna’s seat of power, Isa and Nica uncover a plot to turn the people of Faetatica into mindless productivity machines (and to hell with the side-effects).

On the plus side, Isa finally remembers what she needs to move on—closure regarding her birth parents.

Now all she has to do is keep Nica safe from Genna long enough to find them.

Royalty Free image vaguely representing a character named Emmi from the new version of Awake!.