TITLE
A LESSON IN RUIN
Status - Completed
PITCH
“You can’t die yet, Elarion, you owe me a proper murder attempt.”
Ever since her father died five years ago, nineteen-year-old Maevis Elarion, a street-raised necromancer, has used her rare magic to help keep a roof over her family’s heads. When she’s caught reviving a soul, she’s offered a place at the notoriously dangerous Astraekar Academy. In return for adding her valuable magic to their ranks, Maevis is offered a life of security for herself and her family.
On her first day at Astraekar, Maevis runs into the last person she ever wanted to see: Kess Virelin, her cold and calculating former bully. When mixing their blood together during Bloodcraft class, a simple lesson instead tethers the two together in an inexplicable bond that breaks every known rule of magic. It lets them hear each other’s thoughts. Then memories. Then more. As the connection deepens, Maevis stops seeing Kess as the callous creature responsible for the worst moments of her life, and starts to understand the tender, tortured soul beneath.
While their relationship transforms from resentment into something intimate and obsessive,
Maevis and Kess try to understand the origins of their bond. They uncover secrets buried beneath the academy—forbidden sigils, erased history, and blood rituals. When they realise their bond may not be so inexplicable after all, but part of an experiment to produce an all-powerful, completely obedient soldier, Maevis and Kess must decide who they’re willing to trust, and what—or who—they’re willing to lose to hold on to their free will.
Because Astraekar’s brutal halls will never offer safety—only sacrifice.
TITLE
SALTGRAVE
Status - Editing
PITCH
SALTGRAVE is a New Adult sapphic fantasy romance combining the sweeping adventure of The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi with the emotional depth of The Priory of the Orange Tree.
Captain Ada Hale has spent her whole life hunting the monsters of the Saltgrave, harvesting their blood so the Sea Witches can command the sea and keep Imperial trade routes open. But when a Kraken attack tears through her ship and kills the woman she loves, she finds one person to blame. The Sea Witch of Kodin.
Ada storms into the witch's home and slits her lover's throat. Thyren answers with a curse that will see Ada drown on dry land.
It should have remained between them. Instead, Thyren's fascination with Ada spirals into violence when she floods an Imperial city, making pirates and Sea Witches alike enemies of the Empire. Stranded beyond Imperial waters, Ada and Thyren must cross the Saltgrave—where sea monsters born from the Fracture still haunt the waters—before the Empire reaches the people they've left behind, including the coven Thyren would die to protect.
Ada is prepared for monsters beneath the waves. She isn't prepared for the woman beside her.
Every mile strips away another certainty. The monster Ada built in her head begins to look unnervingly human, while the woman she'd sworn to hate refuses to become the villain she needs. Instead, Thyren has an infuriating habit of asking the questions Ada never wants to answer, until vengeance starts to look less like justice and more like somewhere convenient to leave her grief.
Ada has convinced herself that being Captain means every burden belongs on her shoulders. Thyren refuses to let her.
But with the Empire closing in and war spreading across the Saltgrave, Ada believes loving Thyren will cost her the Captain her crew needs. Now she's left to question whether that impossible choice ever truly existed at all.
TITLE
HOLY IS THE HUNGER
Status - Editing
PITCH
HOLY IS THE HUNGER is an Adult sapphic gothic fantasy featuring dark academia, religious horror, vampires, and a dark psychosexual romance. It will appeal to readers of An Education in Malice and A Dowry of Blood, where oppressive Catholic gothic collides with guilt, obsession, desire, and the seductive nature of corruption.
Twenty-year-old Lucia Serrano is sent to the isolated Carmine Academy after her devout Catholic parents discover her relationship with another woman. Believing her lover, Gloria, has also been sent there as punishment, Lucia arrives determined to find her. Instead, she finds an institution devoted to confession, redemption, and convincing its students that every sin is worthy of damnation.
Refusing to repent interests Professor Thalia Valen, Carmine's enigmatic head of Moral Theology. Rather than punishing Lucia's defiance, Valen becomes captivated by her unwavering convictions, inviting her into a series of private tutorials where every lesson becomes a contest of conviction and control. As rumours of disappearing students spread through the academy, Lucia begins to see the contradictions beneath Carmine's carefully constructed faith. When she realises Valen has developed an unsettling obsession with her, she decides to exploit the professor's fixation, convinced it is the only way to find Gloria and uncover the truth behind Carmine.
Instead of leading her to Gloria, every answer seems to tether her more firmly to Valen. Strange rituals hint at something ancient lurking beneath the academy's sacred façade, while their increasingly intimate battle for control twists manipulation into desire. As obsession eclipses suspicion, Lucia begins to question whether she is exposing a monster or willingly surrendering to one.
HOLY IS THE HUNGER is a story about religious trauma, queer desire, and discovering that some hungers are far more seductive than salvation.