This series is my current project. So far, it's been really fun to write. Its recurring theme is genre-blending - I'm using the premise to make fun of genres by mixing them. Book one is Fantasy (fairies) + Western; book two is Sci-Fi + Paranormal (Vampires & werewolves); and book three is Historical Romance + Horror (Zombies).
The Premise:
It’s a widely acknowledged truth (among Middle Ages people and tyrants, anyway) that books are dangerous. Anything can happen between the pages, and without a structured plot it almost certainly will. And poor you, if that happened. You’d be left curled in a ball crying for brain bleach.
That’s where we come in. We’re the Protagonists. We enter book-worlds and fix the plot for you. We fight the evil Antagonists, who want every book to be a tragedy. We influence it toward a happy ending and make it safe.
Is it safe for us, you might ask?
Well… no. Not at all.
(finished)
My name is Emma Fairhaven. I’m a sophomore in high school, and my dad happens to be crazy. Oh, and a Protagonist. Both are apparently hereditary.
On the eve of my sixteenth birthday, I get yanked into a fantasy book-world that somehow got mixed up with a Western. Think getting stuck in the body of a three-foot-tall purple-skinned fairy sounds bad? It gets worse: the fairies are radical environmentalists, and the cowboys want to build a railroad right through the middle of their forest. How do they solve their disagreement? With a BIG HUGE WAR. Bullets and arrows flying everywhere. Snares, spying, kidnapping, dueling. Oh, and a bit of cross-species flirting.
As if that wasn’t enough, I also have to save Aaron Graybeal, the former most popular guy in school—who happens to be a Protagonist too—from dying. And it would really help if I could quit dreaming about kissing him.
Welcome to my world.
Once you’re here, you’ll wish that storybooks stayed between the pages.
(currently drafting)
Hi. My name's Catey LaRue, and I'm the bad guy (or bad chick, if you want to get technical). I ruin plots for fun, in between cheerleading practice and breaking the hearts of the entire football team. (I know, right? My life rocks!)
Except sometimes being an Antagonist isn't so fun - especially when that stupid Emma Fairhaven keeps untangling my best plot knots. And flirting with my ex-boyfriend Aaron. I really don't like her.
Take the last book-world we were in, for instance. I had it absolutely perfect. It was a sci-fi world, but then I added some vampires (and werewolves for good measure). There were spaceship battles, thwarted romances, stuff blowing up, and even some sexy bite scenes.
But then Emma got involved, and it all went wrong...I mean, it all went right...oh, whatever.
(outlining)
'Sup. I'm Aaron Graybeal. Dunno why you would want to read my Protagonist journal - I'm a pretty sucky Protagonist. I mean, I pretty much bombed my first dive into a book-world. Got my soul ripped in half and all that—it was pure luck that my friend Emma Fairhaven put me back together before I died.
So I sorta-kinda thought I’d lost my Protagonist powers. And believe me, I wasn’t really complaining too hard. I was happy to sit back and support Emma, who recently became my girlfriend, and sit in the back at guild meetings. Em is much better at book-world traveling than me—and I swear I’m not biased. That much.
But then the Sense hits me full force: I’m getting called into a new book-world. And it’s a historical romance.
As you can imagine, I’m not too enthusiastic about it. Even if I liked historical romances—which I don’t—I already learned my lesson about the dangers of falling in love in a book-world. And according to my mom, EVERYONE who ends up in a romance novel falls in love.
I don’t even want to think about what Emma would say if she knew where I was going. Which she doesn’t, since I told her it was an action story, with lots of stuff blowing up. I’m just praying she doesn’t use her own Sense to discover the truth.
And that’s just the problems I have BEFORE I get into the book-world. Once I’m there, I have to deal with the heroine possibly falling for me instead of the hero, the flirty maid who hits on me every chance she gets, and the appearance of my ex-girlfriend, the Antagonist Catey LaRue.
When Catey crosses the romance with a gory zombie-laden horror plot, it’s up to me to save the hero, the heroine, the flirty maid, the disapproving parents, and all the other stuck-up rich people (with their pinkie-out tea-drinking and strict social rules and super-boring lives) from an army of zombie prostitutes… who might possibly be after more than brains.
I know, right? Em is gonna FREAK when she finds out.