Beautiful Monster

BEAUTIFUL MONSTER, formerly known as EPHEMERAL (a title I am still rather fond of), is a 60,000ish word YA fairy tale.  After some wild adventures in the land of querying in 2010--including several truly wonderful correspondences with some great agents, and one spectacular rejection in which I was addressed as "Dead Hanna"--as well as a journey to New York to garner feedback from Donna Jo Napoli, and a rollicking good time in the ABNA quarterfinals, I have decided that it's time for this little book to kick back and get some rest.

Henceforth, BEAUTIFUL will no longer be seeking agent representation. But if you would like to read it, please visit Smashwords and download the free e-book version of the manuscript.  While I do not consider the book "self-published," I am pleased to be able to offer it to those who wish to read it without personally distributing the file by email.

Here's some more about the book...

Sixteen year-old Yseult is beautiful. 

She is also sarcastic, witty, bookish and loyal, but no one ever seems to notice those things.  All anyone in the countryside of 19^th Century France ever notices is that Yseult is a prime candidate for wifehood and would make a fine ornament for some lucky man to parade around as his own.

But there is nothing Yseult wants less than the locked cage of matrimony.  So when an arranged marriage threatens to quash her independence forever, she stages her own death and escapes into an unknown—and likely perilous—future with nothing but an odd gypsy diary and a stolen flower to guide her.

She expects her flight to result in danger, even doom.  She does not expect it to leave her in a utopia where enchantments are real, women are equal to men, and loves stronger than curses are born.  When she meets René, a beastly-looking young man without the ability to perceive beauty, she discovers for the first time what it is like to be known and loved for who she is rather than what she looks like.  But she also realizes that bits of who she is have been hidden from even her own knowledge, and that René has secrets of his own... secrets he seems determined to keep.  So Yseult makes a reckless choice, and too soon understands that if she does not confront her heart and defy those who would break her, she will lose herself—and condemn René to the mercy of the curse that is killing him.