Just Released!

HAFFLING

by

 

HAFFLING, set in Manhattan, is the story of sixteen year old Alex Nevus, his little sister Alice, and his mentally ill mother, Marilyn.  Alex is a brilliant guy determined to hold his family together against a backdrop of unbearable tragedy.  Years earlier he and his sister were placed in a foster home where Alice was molested, and Alex pushed the man who did it to his death.  He's also haunted by the specter of his own madness.  Ever since he can remember he's had a six-inch bare-breasted fairy named Nimby sitting on his shoulder, that combined with a schizophrenic mother gives him cause for worry.  Further down on the list of things that keep him up at night is his growing crush on the most-perfect boy in his class, who currently goes out with the most-perfect girl.

Since being reunited as a family, Alex has become a master of knowing the rules.  All of which goes to hell when his mother fails to show up for her disability hearing.  When he tracks her down to a park at the northern tip of NYC, his world comes undone as he follows her into a parallel realm.  There, he meets a power-hungry queen who would conquer the world, but requires a suitable vessel to pass between the dimensions.  She needs Alex...or at least parts of him to make that happen.
HAFFLING is available as an ebook through amazon and Barnes and Noble, and as both an ebook and paperback through the publisher--Dreamspinner Press/Harmony Ink (it will eventually be available in paperback through other on-line sellers, as well.)

 


Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Dreamspinner Press/Harmony Ink

I've not had the chance to post in a while--very busy with book projects and a variety of professional trainings.  Over the past few months I've been blessed to have two book projects given the green light.  This includes my first Young Adult (YA) novel--HAFFLING(Dreamspinner Press/Harmony Ink), which will be released Fall 2013.  This will be my first outing with a pseudonym--Caleb James.  At some point I'll revisit the hows and whys authors use pen names. 

Today's topic is this--One of the less glamorous jobs of a writer is to be able to condense a book into a variety of synopses, blurbs, jacket copy etc and to do it fast. Faced with my young adult novel Haffling about to shoot down the production conveyer belt I must reduce 330 pages of teen angst into two hundred words or less. Here's my morning's shot at it with help from Elizabeth Fitzgerald and the editorial staff at Dreamspinner. All comments are gratefully appreciated. 

All sixteen year old Alex Nevus wants is to be two years older and become his sister Alice's legal guardian. That, and he'd like his first kiss, preferably with Jerod Haynes. Sadly, wanting something and getting it, are very different. Strapped with a mentally ill mother, he fears for his own sanity--having a fairy on his shoulder that only he can see doesn't help. Jerod Haynes has a girlfriend, and his mother's schizophrenia places Alice and him in constant jeopardy of being carted back into foster care.

When Alex's mother goes missing, everything falls apart. Frantic, he tracks her to a remote corner of Manhattan and is transported to another dimension--the land of the Unsee, the realm of the Fey. There he finds his mother held captive by the power-mad Queen May, and he learns that he is half human and half fey – a Haffling.

As Alex's human world is being destroyed, so too the Unsee is being devoured by a ravenous mist. Fey is vanishing and May needs to cross into the human world. She needs something that only Alex can provide and she will stop at nothing to possess it...to possess him.