Looking for critique partners + to expand my writing circle!
Lea de Sousa
Olivia Danielle
Amanda Kelley
shinjini ray
Holland Ward
Analeigh Beckett knows that if she remains in Grenwich’s West Fork slums, she will die. Choked to death by the smog or crushed beneath a spinning loom in the factory, she will be buried with all the other gutter rats in the city just like her father was.
So when the men in nice suits recruit her colleague Andrew to be an engineer on a fancy airship instead of her, she does what she must: nick his letter of employment and get on the ship in his place.
Her mother warns her that the skies are no safer than land. Unexplained explosions, magic cores gone missing, and pirates once imprisoned sighted again. But the coin is far better, the beds are much warmer, and she can finally afford a frock without holes. And for the first time in her life, she thinks she’s making friends.
Marilyn Lee, an apprentice healer, is preparing to take the assistantship exam that will determine her future in the profession. Duncan Fairtree is a conduit—a conductor of magic—struggling to convince the magistrate that he can be trusted again after nearly burning down the ship in a fit of heartbreak. Together with their friend Jesse Helm, the four must manage the turbulence of early adulthood as the Windcrest comes face-to-face with a ship disaster that nearly costs them all their dreams…and lives.
Following multiple perspectives, HEARTHSWORN is a 150k new adult steampunk fantasy adventure with series potential that may appeal to fans of Tara Sim’s TIMEKEEPER trilogy or V.E. Schwab’s SHADES OF MAGIC trilogy. Since dreaming of this book at 15 years old, I’ve followed an academic path in English literature through to a master’s degree, as well as a graduate certificate in folklore studies. I write stories and articles for a university that involve far less magic and too few explosions, much to my dismay.
Content warnings include: depictions of violence and gore; descriptions of anxiety and depression, self-doubt; past emotional/mental abuse in a queer relationship; depictions of Industrial Revolutions-age poverty and poor working conditions; excessive alcohol consumption; recreational drug use.
