Shadow Brother (Novel, English, 2016-2019)
A story about a young girl who finds a boy only she can see or hear in her bedroom and wants to get rid of him. Originally written for NaNoWriMo 2016, I completed the first draft over the course of the following three instances of the event. The complete book currently measures ~135000 words total, though there is still a lot I am planning to cut and/or edit heavily before sending the novel out to find a publisher. I also have considered the possibility of releasing the book in parts.
The story is written in first person and is aimed towards a Young Adult-demographic, though I tried to not lean too heavily into the Genre’s typical tropes.
You can read the first chapter here.
Excerpt:
"Why are you here?" I asked. "Why are you always in here and talking to me, like it was the most normal thing in the world? It's not. You should know that. You're not that dumb."
The legs on the ladder took the last few steps. He disappeared from my sight and said nothing else.
"Why are you here?"
I was the last one to speak that night, and despite not wanting that boy to say anything else, I cried when I didn't get a reply. Back then I wanted an answer to that question more than anything else. I wanted to know why that room that I'd been promised as a home couldn't be mine as I'd thought it would be, and why there was somebody else who seemed like he deserved it much more than I did. Everything that Margaret wanted from me and that I didn't think I could give to her, as well as all the things I wanted from that room and that it just wouldn't give to me, they all belonged to that boy in the upper bunk. A boy and a bunk that both shouldn't have existed. That was what I regretted: Choosing a life that seemed to fit somebody else much better than me.
The night that this question I wanted answers to first crossed my mind, I was 14 years old. Now, four years later, I can only look back and say that the regrets from back then are still there. In many ways they even grew. But despite that, I wouldn't trade that life I've had for the past few years for anything in the world. I wouldn't have been able to find the answer to the question I asked myself that night in anybody else's life.
