Some of you have seen this mentioned in the various guest blogs and interviews that I did for Venom, but I wanted to wait until after the blog tour was over to make the official announcement. I’ve got some excellent news to report — I’ve sold a young adult urban fantasy series! Huzzah!

It’s going to be called the Mythos Academy series, and the first book is titled Touch of Frost. Here’s what it’s about:

Gwen Frost is a 17-year-old Gypsy girl with the gift of psy­chom­e­try — or the abil­ity to know an object’s his­tory just by touch­ing it. Gwen can see everyone who’s ever touched an object — and she can feel their emotions too, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Gwen uses her magic to track down objects that other kids have lost like cell phones, wallets, and purses — for a price.

After a serious freakout with her magic and her mom’s death, Gwen gets shipped off to Mythos Acad­emy, a school for the rich, privileged descen­dants of ancient war­riors like Spar­tans, Ama­zons, Valkyries, and more. Gwen doesn’t know one end of the sword from the other, and she doesn’t fit in with the other kids. But when Jasmine Ashton, the most popular girl in school is mur­dered, and Gwen herself is attacked, Gwen decides to use her Gypsy gift to figure out who killed the other girl and why — and finds herself learning some secrets that just might kill her …

Basically, the book is kind of like Veron­ica Mars meets the movie 300. I’ve always loved mythology, and I thought it would be fun to write a YA book with that sort of backdrop. Since the books are for young adults, they aren’t quite as dark and gritty as my Elemental Assassin series, but I would say that the Mythos Academy books are for older teens. There is some drinking, violence, and sex in the books.

If you like my Elemental Assassin books, you might like the Mythos Academy books too. The voice is very similar, and both series feature the same things — a strong, sassy heroine, cool magic/world building, and a seriously nasty bad guy. Gwen’s love interest — a Spartan warrior named Logan Quinn — is just a little dreamier than Gin’s love interest is. LOL.

The deal is for three books, which will be published by Kensington. Touch of Frost, the first book, will be out in August 2011, while the second book, Kiss of Frost, will be out in December 2011.

So in 2011, I’ll have four books out — Tangled Threads (Elemental Assassin #4) in May; Touch of Frost (Mythos Academy #1) in August; book 5 (Elemental Assassin series) in October; and Kiss of Frost (Mythos Academy #2) in December. It’s going to be a busy year. 😉

The  third book in the Mythos Academy series is untitled at this point. It should be out sometime in 2012, but of course, that could change. Ideally, I’d like to write at least four or five books in the series, but that will depend on sales, like everything else does.

Anyway, I’ll let you know when I get more details. And of course, I’ll be posting the covers, a FAQ, character info, and more here on the website as they become available and I find time to write them.

In the meantime, I’m doing the happy dance! 😉

Tags: About Books, Mythos Academy series, On Writing, Young adult