Stars of the Sea is Finished (sort of)

After over a year, a miscarriage, a pregnancy, birthing my precious daughter, and navigating working and raising a child, Stars of the Sea is finally finished! Well, the first draft at least. It's a pretty clean draft, but there are already so many elements bouncing around my head that I want to add. I'll also need to bulk up this 50,000-word manuscript to 60,000 words during my editing process.

What's a better way to celebrate than commissioning art of my main characters? Here's a peek into the monster romance in this book!

Here's a summary of the story:

17-year-old Marella has grown up most of her life at Stanley's Starlight Circus as an underwater performer. Since a young age, she could hold her breath for extreme amounts of time and has a skin condition that the circus monopolizes, claiming she’s a real-life mermaid. She dreams of performing under the Big Top but, as a “freak,” is barred from such. That’s until the circus acquires a creature, Finn, as she soon calls him, and Marella is tasked to train and perform with him in a magical underwater act. Finn is nothing like anything she’s ever seen, seeming to be half human and half sea monster, with no ability to talk. As Marella learns more about Finn, she realizes he’s not a creature at all but an individual with complex feelings and thoughts, and she soon develops strong feelings for him. As their connection grows stronger, turmoil from the circus and the harsh realities of the outside world in the 1920s come crashing down around them. Marella must help Finn escape, and decide if her destiny is worth risking her life.