I invented an alien accent by ear, then had to reverse-engineer the grammar that would naturally produce it. When Vylaraian pickpocket Lari said “I’s tryin’ t’ be you friend,” I wasn’t thinking about linguistics—just making her sound right. But months later, writing a reader magnet, I needed actual Vylaraian words. I couldn’t just make up random phonemes. The accent was data. Every “mistake” was evidence. “You bag” instead of “your bag” revealed possessive suffixes, not separate pronouns. “I is” pointed to unconjugated verbs and VSO word order. Consistent “th” to “d” shifts showed missing phonemes. The patterns weren’t random—they described interference from a complete linguistic system. Traditional conlangs work top-down: grammar first, then dialogue. I went bottom-up: dialogue that sounded authentic, then discovered the grammar hiding inside it. The accent became a skeleton key, unlocking an entire alien language.
What Actually Makes YA Literature “Young Adult”
A reader challenged me after I posted about “Doors to the Stars,” my YA space opera: aren’t you just writing adult fiction with a teenage protagonist? It’s a sophisticated question that cuts to the heart of YA’s current crisis. The genre has been captured by adult readers, and publishers responded by making seventeen-year-olds act like college students with adult emotional processing. But the answer to what makes fiction YA isn’t about what darkness you include—it’s about something else entirely. When a 13-year-old kills to protect another girl from sexual exploitation, is that YA or adult fiction? The answer might surprise you.
Your Choices Matter: A Space Opera for Deltarune Fans
What does it mean when a game tells you your choices don’t matter—and then proves they do? Toby Fox’s Deltarune asks this question brilliantly, exploring themes of agency, control, and something alien merged with you that threatens your autonomy. I didn’t discover it until after writing Doors to the Stars, which tackles the exact same themes: a junk rat named Wulan bonding with an ancient alien artifact, wrestling with guilt and desperation, trying to heal a traumatized galaxy while maintaining her humanity. Both stories ask: can you still choose who you become when the system denies you agency? Maybe that’s what matters most.
Doors to the Stars Sample Chapter
Sixteen-year-old Wulan has weeks to live. Radiation poisoning from her last salvage run is killing her, and the only thing that might save her is selling the ancient Forger disk she found in the wreck—alien biotech that hums with her dead mother’s lullaby. When a double-cross gets her best friend killed, she stows away on a smuggler ship and finds something she thought she’d lost forever: a family worth fighting for, who’ll fight for her in return. But now the Ascendancy is hunting her. Cornered by a ruthless enforcer with a personal vendetta, the disk activates in her hands—and she discovers she can open portals between worlds. She also discovers she can’t control them. The disk whispers that it can give her the power to reunite a shattered galaxy—if she’s willing to surrender everything that makes her human. Read the first chapter here.
Modern YA Is Failing Teenagers—I’m Stealing it Back
I queried *Doors to the Stars* to over two dozen agents. Zero full manuscript requests. My 11-year-old daughter stayed up all night devouring it. My 19-year-old son texted me at 2 AM about plot twists. But publishing professionals? Not interested. The book features a 16-year-old scavenger who discovers alien technology, faces impossible moral choices, and carries genuine guilt for thousands of deaths. No graphic sex. Real consequences. Intelligence-driven plot. Exactly what research shows teens actually want. Traditional publishing rejected it because they’ve optimized for adult romance readers, not actual teenagers. So I’m going indie. They stole YA from us. I’m stealing it back.
Wanted: Advance Readers for Doors to the Stars
The artifact is changing her. Everyone who wants it wants to own her. Sixteen-year-old Wulan was dying on a scavenged world until she found an ancient Forger relic humming with alien intelligence. Now the regime hunts her, revolutionaries need her as a weapon, and a smuggler crew just saved her life—but the alien network is waking across the galaxy, and only she can control it. I’m seeking advanced readers for Doors to the Stars, a YA space opera releasing April 2026 for fans of Iron Widow and Skyward. If you want moral complexity, found family, and books that don’t pull punches—I need your honest review.
Doors to the Stars: She Who Dares, Wins
Wulan scavenges radiation-poisoned ruins on Miller’s World, trying to keep a handful of kids alive in a galaxy fractured by a war three centuries past. Then she finds something the Ascendancy has been hunting for decades: a Forger disk, an ancient alien key that can reactivate the gates connecting thousands of worlds. It calls to her in her dead mother’s lullaby. It wants to bond with her—permanently, fusing with her flesh and bone. But the gates aren’t just technology. They’re living minds, ancient and traumatized, and waking them means negotiating with intelligences so vast she can barely comprehend them. Healing them means salvation for civilization, but one mistake could shatter what’s left of the galaxy.
Beyond the Margins 