So, I finally achieved at least one of my New Year goals. I finally published "Balms & Sears," the longest novel I've written.
I've talked about it one hell of a lot (and for that, I'm sorry*), but B&S tells the story of Alec Ewell, who moves into a new Colorado town with his grandfather, and starts at a new high school. Alec tries to be a normal student, a normal kid, but he's not normal . . . Alec is a Balm, a person with the ability to heal what he touches. And that ability has gotten more and more powerful over the years, but it's also gotten him in trouble, because it's supposed to be a secret. And every time Alec uses the Balm, and is discovered, his grandfather decides it's time to move to a new city, get a new last name, and see if this time, he can get it right. Because Alec just can't help himself, and there are people in pain no matter where he goes.
So that's the premise, and it could have been just a short story, or at least a novella, but it got away from me, new characters came in, and new subplots lifted their heads, until it was double the length of my first novel, "Into the Furnace." I don't know how to write a novel, so maybe this would've worked better as a series of short stories, ala Dead & Breakfast and Lara & The Witch (both of which I have written, but not published, novels for).
It took years to finish this book, so it's only fair that it took years for me to get it published. But hey, now that this is out of my system, I can start looking for something new to work on.
Check it out HERE.
*Gosh, if only I could talk about it now that it's done, hyping it up on Facebook and Twitter, pushing it to whoever will listen, in attempts to get them to buy it. Because that's what you have to do in independent publishing, in order to be successful.