In addition to finishing the revisions on Elemental Assassin #4, I’ve also written a young adult book. I’m calling it A Touch of Frost, and it focuses on Gwen Frost, a Gypsy girl with the gift of psychometry — or the ability to know an object’s history just by touching it.

After her mom’s death, Gwen gets shipped off to Mythos Academy, a school for the descendants of ancient warriors, like Spartans, Amazons, Valkyries, and more. When a student is murdered, Gwen decides to use her Gypsy gift to find out who killed the other girl and why. I’m pitching the book as Veronica Mars meets the movie 300 (but without Gerard Butler’s man-abs, unfortunately.)

I’m not sure what, if anything, will happen with this book. There’s always a chance that my agent could hate the book, or that she could submit it to editors and no one will buy it. That’s a very real threat these days, since editors/publishers are cutting back, just like everyone else is. It’s always a little scary being an author, since it’s not a secure job at all and so many things are out of your control. But it’s even more so now, given the crappy economy.

It seems to me like the young adult market is still heavily focused on vampires and werewolves these days, so I’m not sure where a mythology book like mine would fit in. I know that the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan has been wildly successful, so that gives me some hope.

Regardless, if nothing else, finishing A Touch of Frost has proved to me that I can write a young adult book. It’s not as easy as it looks. Especially after writing five Gin Blanco books. Let’s just say that I had to tone the sex, violence, and language way down from the Elemental Assassin series. But in some ways, Gwen Frost is just as kick-butt as Gin is. And hey, there’s a magic sword named Vic in the book. Because you can’t write a mythology book without having some kind of sword or magical weapon in there. 😉

Anyway, we shall see what happens …