The Moon and the Night
Completed Manuscript, Word Count: 72,000
A bold argument for the importance of human connection in an era of widespread technology.
Emma gave up a successful career in neuroscience to manage her family’s hotel. What was initially a difficult personal sacrifice, became unbearable in the intervening years as she struggled to manage her chronic pain while working full-time at the hotel, taking care of her two school-aged children, and fulfilling the expectations of her husband and parents. Her ability to cope with her pain is further challenged when global technological disruptions start to interfere with all forms of audio and visual technology. Dubbed GrAVe, the disruptions occur daily, sometimes for several hours. She suspects that she knows the true cause of GrAVe, but keeps her suspicions to herself, afraid of the chaos that could ensue if the general public knew the GrAVe disruptions were neurological rather than technological. Unlike her husband, Christopher, she isn’t surprised when the government suspends schools along with most mass transportation and manufacturing.
Things reach a breaking point in their relationship, when Christopher defends his mother’s racist theories around the source of GrAVe, then accuses Emma of cheating on him. To escape all of these pressures, Emma takes her two daughters to an abandoned family cabin on Newhorne Island.
A few months later, Christopher is tasked with bringing a government recruiter to Newhorne Island to convince Emma that she has to join the national research campaign into GrAVe. Christopher remains hurt and angry at Emma for leaving him. Though he brings the recruiter to Newhorne Island, he won’t commit to moving across the country with her to the GrAVe research campus.
Emma has always struggled to assert boundaries and figure out what she wants, outside the context of others’ expectations. Faced with the conflicting pressures of returning home with Christopher to manage the hotel, or moving across the country to work on GrAVe, Emma is forced to assert herself and decide what truly matters the most to her.
Echoes
Completed Manuscript, Word Count: 70,000
Is it possible to break free from the bonds of inherited trauma?
Told in three time periods, Echoes, explores the impact of inherited trauma in the Doukhobor community of British Columbia.
–> Ana is a new mother with an extremely colicky baby. Unsupported by her husband and extended family she falls into a sleep-deprived state that amplifies her anxiety and isolation. Left alone with her screaming baby, she becomes convinced that she needs to find her older sister who disappeared five years earlier.
–> Manya is captured by the RCMP and taken to the Doukhobor Residential School. In the face of intense bullying by the other students, she struggles to reconcile her unquestioning love and devotion to her parents with the consequences of their political actions.
–> When Mayna is hospitalized with congestive heart failure, Ana must figure out how to come to terms with childhood neglect and emotional abuse in order to say goodbye to her mother.
The Unintended Changeling
In Progress Manuscript
How to find agency in a family that values the perception of perfection above all else.
The Unintended Changeling is a contemporary retelling of The Donegal Tale, a traditional Irish fairy tale. The fabulist elements are informed by the protagonist’s trauma, allowing the reader to decide whether the story is a fairytale or psychological fiction.
Grace is a 29-year-old woman who hides her low self-esteem by drinking and partying. Caught by fairy-tale-like circumstances, she wakes up in an abandoned tower in the Irish countryside and quickly realizes that she has also lost her ability to communicate through verbal or written language. She is uncertain whether she has been cursed by the Tuatha Dé Danann (Irish fairy folk), or whether she is suffering from a mental health crisis. Regardless, she fears returning to Dublin without being able to assert herself among her domineering family.
In order to stay in Donegal, Grace enlists the help of a young, unkempt farmer with severe social anxiety. At first, Grace dislikes Jamie as he represents the poverty of her upbringing. But as Grace and Jamie learn to communicate using sign language, Grace finds herself freed from the roles that have always dictated her life. However, to regain her voice, she must find the courage to face her family’s involvement in her childhood abuse or continue the rest of her life in silence.