In honor of this auspicious occasion, I thought now would be a good time to reveal the cover for my YA novella, Waterfire. Waterfire is the second novella in the Providence Trilogy. The cover is done by Amygdala Design and actually inspired the fire drill scene on the docks.
Changes in my life have delayed the publication of the Providence Trilogy, but it should still debut, one novella at a time, in 2015.
About Waterfire
Told as a series of diary entries, Waterfire chronicles the way Kelly learns that she has the power to set things on fire with her mind. All such pyrokinetic teenagers must attend a school where their power is repressed at all times. With the help of her friends, Kelly must escape the prison-like regime in order to save her mother's life.
Eggcerpt
September 7
Maybe
if I write about the first day here, it will stop rattling around in my head
like big clumps of lead.
Actually,
I wish I had a big clump of lead to carry around with me instead of this stuff.
They give us small patches, like nicotine patches for people who want to quit
smoking, but with our kryptonite to wear against our skin and help control the
urges. It does seem to cut down on the incidents – I haven’t made a fire since
I got here a week ago. But, God, it itches like crazy! I’m always scratching at
mine, I can’t help it, and I have to be careful with where I put the new patch
of the day because I could look like an idiot scratching my armpits or some
other sensitive area all day. They let us take them off at night so we can
sleep, because everyone has an adverse reaction to their patch, but not
everyone itches. Melinda, the high and mighty, claims it makes her tired so she
can’t do PE. Like she’s having her period, all the time. I swear, she’s like a
Victorian with the vapors every day at two o’clock. And the teachers fall
for it! They let her go take a nap in her room. I wonder what she really
does in there while we have to jog laps around the gym and bounce ridiculous
balls off stupid things, like each other. I mean, what does that have to do
with not setting anything on fire?
Anyway,
my first day here, I barely had time to drop my bags before we had a
get-to-know-you kind of meeting, which they called “orientation.” They made us
all sit in a circle on the floor – yes, the concrete floor, with no rugs or
pillow, what were they thinking? About flammability. I swear that’s all we are
to these people — big walking fireballs. Todd, the lanky upperclassman who led
the group with a senior girl and one of the teachers, had us go around the
circle saying our names and what our kryptonite was. It was probably more to
orient them to us, to prepare the patches, than for any other reason.
So
there are precisely twenty of us newbies here. They started the circle with
Brian, who was sitting right next to me, but it went in the opposite direction!
So after Brian said he couldn’t produce flames in the presence of tungsten,
eighteen other people went ahead of me. I was getting more nervous by the
minute and barely heard what the other people said, with their run-of-the-mill
kryptonites like lithium, beryllium and even krypton, which seems reasonable
enough but is pretty expensive for the school to have on hand. My ears pricked
up when a girl named Jill admitted phosphorus took away her powers. I snickered
quietly to test whether anyone else would, but there were no takers. Come on,
it’s embarrassing to be a pyrokinetic and have that ability erased by
phosphorus, right? The stuff they put in the heads of matches? Doesn’t that seem
a little ironic, at least?
“There’s
no shame in any kryptonite. We all have one,” said Todd. He looked at me out of
the corner of his eye like I was some kind of troublemaker.
So
I rolled my eyes to show my disregard for authority to the other new students
and held my breath again. Maybe if they didn’t laugh at phosphorus, they
wouldn’t laugh at me, either. Maybe. Possibly.
No
one was looking at my reddening face because it was Melinda’s turn, whoop de
doo. She demurely announced her name and said, “My kryptonite is platinum.” She
flashed a smile that I swear cut the air with a knife-sharpening sound. She
drew a shiny necklace from under her blouse. “I already wear this all the time,
ever since my parents gave it to me. I won’t need a patch.”
A
hushed “ooh” went around the circle. Todd was nodding, as if Melinda had
already arranged it all with the administration. Brian, right next to me,
sucked in air. I couldn’t say exactly what he was thinking, but I knew right
then that I liked him. A lot. Unbidden, the image of placing a darkly shiny
tungsten wedding band around his finger entered my mind. It helped that he
smelled pretty good. Since then, of course, it’s hard to smell anything other
than my stupid patch.
Melinda’s
act was hard to follow and I didn’t notice what anyone else said, so when it
came to me, it still seemed like I had to compare myself to platinum. I covered
my mouth to muffle the name of my fire-dampening element, but of course Todd
said, “What was that? Say it again.”
“My
name is Kelly,” I repeated, putting my diaphragm into it. “And my kryptonite is
sulfur.” I wondered if I’d started a blaze on my face. I couldn’t feel my
cheeks as I smiled, bracing myself. It was the same sinking, sick feeling I had
with Uncle Jack a month ago. The laughter bubbled under the surface. I could
feel it coming.
“Fire,
but not brimstone,” Melinda said in a way that questioned the possibility.
Then
it started. Todd snorted and the teacher, Ms. Matheson, barked a laugh over the
snickering that was growing so sinisterly in volume. She clapped her hands over
her mouth and composed herself to say, “There is no shame in any kryptonite!
Hush! Quiet! My weakness is lead!”
She
reached into her purse beside her — I’d thought she was just kind of weird to
keep her purse with her in this situation — and pulled out a key ring with no
keys attached to it, but several irregularly shaped rocks that must have been
made of lead. She certainly hefted it as if it weighed a ton. “I can’t wear
lead against my skin because it would poison me like a regular person, beyond
taking my pyrokinesis away.”
The
laughter died down with the interest in the new distraction. I thought of
getting up and walking out, but Ms. Matheson continued and I had to hear. “I
have to carry these pieces of lead with me at all times so I can get to them in
an emergency, like a diabetic or something. I can’t even put this charm as far
away from me as the conveyor belt when I go through airport security. Believe
me, that can add to the difficulties of a trip.” Then she smiled so sweet and
silly at all the newbies, they had to chuckle the way you might at a cute baby.
I
loved Ms. Matheson then. She looked into my eyes and I could tell that was
exactly what she wanted — a new friend from among the outcasts. She must be a weirdo
in her life, too, with no friends her own age. I looked away and stayed quiet,
hoping no one would remember me for the rest of the orientation. When Todd and
Ms. Matheson finished explaining about curfews and hall passes and field trips,
I stood up as slowly as I could, my every movement calling attention, in my
mind, anyway. They were commencing a ritual of significance I didn’t learn
until later and didn’t notice me slip out. Without a hall pass. [...]
What adventures will Kelly get herself into? Waterfire is a humorous, dramatic, and engaging novella and also a love poem to Providence, Rhode Island.
Though Waterfire isn't available yet, I do have other books with a similar flair available now.
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