I Am Here

Hi. I’m writer Courtney Vail, hopefully soon-to-be published author. I’m a wife, a mom, an artist, a sports addict, a freak, a geek, a thrill seeker, a practical joker and most importantly, a child of the Most High God. The purpose of my blog is to talk about writing, to spur some creativity and share ways at boosting overall brain power.

I’ve written short stories and poems, but my passion lies in writing novels. The first one I wrote, appropriately titled Rotten Apples, about a recent high school graduate embroiled in a black market kidnapping scheme, is…well… let’s just say it’s marked up with too much red pen and some coffee rings, tucked in a purple folder in a file drawer and it won’t see the light of day until I’m in the mood to do a complete rewrite.

Kings & Queens, the second novel I dreamed up, literally, about a teenage girl who overhears a mass murder plot and struggles to find the would-be-killers before they act, is a book I’m far more eager to share with the world. I currently have it circulating in a small writer’s group at www.thenextbigwriter.com. Once I finish that up and do some more scrubbing, I’ll begin the somewhat scary endeavor of agent hunting. I’m not looking forward to the rejection that hits authors-in-the-making, but I’m so excited to get my work out there. I believe in this book and know some agent will love it. Threads of mystery, suspense, romance, action, family drama, baseball, and even some weirdness and spirituality, give it wide-spectrum appeal.

My biggest obstacle, aside from my perfectionism about my writing, may be the ages of my POV characters, who are all teens. Even though my book carries mature themes and content and is far more intricate than typical YA fair, I can see some agent wanting to market it as YA, and thus ruin my plans for the sequel I’m writing, Sapphire Reign, which is so much darker and has protagonists of varying ages. My main characters for Kings & Queens came to me as teens, and because so many readers on Amazon often complain about novels having plot over character or visa versa, I strove to write a book with a strong plot and interesting, multi-faceted characters, not really caring what their ages were. I’ll see once I test the waters how my book is received.

~ Signing off and sending out cyber hugs.

~ by Courtney Vail on August 4, 2008.