YA Contemporary Fantasy with Character-driven narrative seeking enthusiastic CP.
I’m Zsofia, currently living just outside of London, UK. I’ve been writing fairly regularly for the past 5 years, mostly YA. I love to read all types of YA, and enjoy a well-written fantasy, romance, or historical fiction as well. I’m looking for a CP for feedback and advice, and I’d love to bounce ideas off another person and be able to help them at the same time! I don’t have any writer friends and I’m missing that enthusiastic connection that happens between authors who work well with each other.
Apart from writing I love musicals and classical music, I recently got back into playing the violin after having played as a child and then stopped for 8 years. My day job is tech consulting, I’ve always had a big interest in STEM subjects, and normally when I read non-fiction it’s usually science or math – though I do also love reading philosophy.
As mentioned in my about me section, I really love to read all sorts of YA, and try to stay a lot within the genre to be more effective at writing for that audience, but if a book can manage to grab me I can read pretty much any genre. I am a sucker for period romance, Jane Austen is one of my weak spots, and I’ve read and honestly enjoyed many bad books in that category. I like diverse books and own voices stories, especially as a white woman I want to be able to include diverse characters in my stories respectfully.
I’m not a huge fan of purple prose, I like books that are enjoyable to read and easy to comprehend.
I am not off-put by unlikeable characters, when they’re done well I can really enjoy them, but I don’t like sexist, or racist characters as an MC in a novel if they do not learn something from their mistakes.
The Price of Magic starts off as your usual Chosen One story: Lisa Kendrick, who’s hoping to be a primary school teacher, has visions of ghosts that she wants to get rid of. Except, as it turns out, this is due to her having one of the most powerful types of magic in the world – supernatural magic. Panicked by the fact that her ghost sightings start to have real effects on the world and people surrounding her, she is convinced to go to Exestimatoris University to get her powers in check.
This proves to be more difficult than she thought with the accidental almost-murder of one of her classmates, not to mention the additional drama she needs to go through as possibly the most powerful magician in school with no prior knowledge of magic. This is the main focal point of the story: how can Lisa manage university life full of its own drama and insanity while also trying not to murder people by accident.
It started with me throwing up in my mum’s car. At the time it was only Dina there to witness it with me – thank goodness -, but that didn’t make it any less awful. The bile sting of the orange juice and vodka from last night mixed with who-knows-what was a better wake-up call than anything before.
“Jesus, Lisa, try to keep some of that bread down. You need to soak up the alcohol with carbs. Trust me, nothing is better at making this pass.” Dina pulled the car over to the side of the road and passed me another slice of white bread, which I slowly chewed my way through.
“I don’t know how you do this so often.” I tried shaking my head; a bad idea. My world started swirling again, Dina opened up the door for me to retch outside on the pavement just in time.
“Practise makes perfect.” I would have rolled my eyes at her if I weren’t staring at my own puddle of vomit, contemplating whether there’ll be more to come.
I glanced at the car clock; I had approximately forty-five minutes to pull myself together in order to get ready for my volunteering work.
I was in no condition to teach anything to anyone without risk of vomiting on them, especially not screaming preschool children. Even thinking about that gave me a headache. Urgh, I am such a bad influence.
I have the start of an outline for an adult fantasy that I’d maybe pitch as A Song of Ice and Fire meets Romeo and Juliet, but only have a couple of snippets of scenes and ideas for the story, no draft MS yet.
I also have a YA/MG fiction story based on personal experience focused on dealing with trauma and grief as a teenager, I have an almost full outline for that, but no scenes as of yet.
I recently thought of a great idea for another novel, a YA romance duology with a soft-magic system world behind it, it basically “clicked” together a couple of story ideas I had in my head for a while.
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Happy writing and CPing!
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