After finishing the last
and final chapter of the Harrowbethian Saga, I wept for a
short time, a mixture of joyous and desolate tears. I had accomplished
far more than the one book I had set out to write. What a wondrous
feeling of completion! But now it was over. "The End"
inked on the page. What now?
It had taken me four years to write out the original first draft comprising 139
chapters plus a prologue and epilogue that in sum amounted to the entire saga.
I was well-pleased with the adventure, a fantasy—sci fi—romance sprinkled
with myth and magic. It had been a delightful and entertaining hike
through my imagination. A crazy, BIG achievement that left me itching to
write more.
But what if I were to write a different type of book this time around.
A novel. More realistic. Less fantastical. One with the
power to manipulate a reader's heart.
Sold on the idea, I went about accomplishing the task.
The result is a book about little Miss Anna, entitled Dandelions:The Disappearance of Annabelle Fancher.
It is a stand-alone novel that proved a struggle to compose, and yet I
found it immeasurably rewarding. In the end I was able to shape a
loveable character named Annabelle, a girl both young and fragile, mature and
clever.
Dandelions:The Disappearance of Annabelle Fancher is the fictional
tale of an elementary-aged girl struggling to cope with her aggrieved mother
and alcoholic father. By day-dreaming characters to life from popular
fairytales, she manages to create make-believe moments of happiness in the
midst of harsh circumstances. School is the only place Annabelle interacts socially
where a few individuals suspecting her circumstances attempt to reach out to
the wary girl. But it is an imagined friend whom she turns to repeatedly for
comfort and kindness. When his ghostly form appears before her during waking
hours, his voice augmenting the hallucination, it becomes a struggle to keep
reality and pretend from blurring boundaries. Her choice, it seems, is to
succumb to madness, and happily so, or embrace her cruel reality.
Dandelions: The Disappearance of Annabelle Fancher is available at the following online retailers:
