The Shapeshifter & The Scribe is split time upmarket fiction
- Split time means that part of the novel takes place in the present and part takes place in the past. The present-day storyline follows a musician-in-the-closet as she travels across the world in search of answers about who she is. The storyline of the past follows the journal entries of a Cherokee anthropologist who traveled the world in the 1920s (well before it was considered proper for a woman to travel alone).
- Upmarket means that the writing style straddles the divide between literary and commercial fiction. (Literary fiction is all about the artistry of the writing. Commercial fiction is all about the plot.)
- Fiction means I made it all up.
What's it about?
Armed with only air miles and a journal full of folklore, a woman in search of her calling embarks on a global journey to find out who she is and why she inexplicably remembers a musician she’s never even heard of.
What are the major themes?
- Travel
- Music
- Love (and I mean the kind of soul-igniting, once-in-a-lifetime love that defies death, survives the hereafter, and brings its bearers back together again and again and again and again)
What's the synopsis?
Larke isn’t the sort who can just be happy settling for a decent life with a prosaic job and an innocuous relationship. She craves passion, adventure, and a true vocation. She knows her calling is out there, she just can’t hear it yet. When she sees the brilliant English musician Gabe Windsley perform at the Bowery Ballroom, she has no idea who he is and yet she inexplicably, undeniably remembers him. She’s shocked, enchanted, and determined to find out how exactly they’re connected (or whether she’s just lost the plot). The problem is he lives on the other side of the Atlantic … and he’s annoyingly famous over there.
She’s got nothing but courage, postal stamps, and the address of Gabe’s agency in London. Until she finds an old journal that belonged to her great-grandmother Na’ura, a world-traveling Cherokee anthropologist. As she reads, Larke becomes haunted by the tale of Na’ura’s first love, a kaleidoscopic physicist from Constantinople, and how they were torn apart before their time. Eager to escape New York, Larke decides to use the legends in Na'ura's journal as guideposts in her search for her purpose. She travels the mist-riddled pinnacles of the Li River Valley of China, the incense-wreathed cacophony of Kathmandu, and the electric cerulean waters of the Maldives, writing to Gabe as she goes.
Eventually, Larke’s soul-searching unearths something she worked hard to forget—that she was once a gifted pianist. She abandoned her craft at sixteen years old because of overwhelming stage fright. Now, her buried fear of performing has grown unchecked for seventeen years. If she can’t overcome it, she’ll have to give up her calling all over again. But if she can, then she might gain entrée to Gabe’s world. And if she does that much, she’ll also discover his family’s link to Na’ura’s lost love.
She’s got nothing but courage, postal stamps, and the address of Gabe’s agency in London. Until she finds an old journal that belonged to her great-grandmother Na’ura, a world-traveling Cherokee anthropologist. As she reads, Larke becomes haunted by the tale of Na’ura’s first love, a kaleidoscopic physicist from Constantinople, and how they were torn apart before their time. Eager to escape New York, Larke decides to use the legends in Na'ura's journal as guideposts in her search for her purpose. She travels the mist-riddled pinnacles of the Li River Valley of China, the incense-wreathed cacophony of Kathmandu, and the electric cerulean waters of the Maldives, writing to Gabe as she goes.
Eventually, Larke’s soul-searching unearths something she worked hard to forget—that she was once a gifted pianist. She abandoned her craft at sixteen years old because of overwhelming stage fright. Now, her buried fear of performing has grown unchecked for seventeen years. If she can’t overcome it, she’ll have to give up her calling all over again. But if she can, then she might gain entrée to Gabe’s world. And if she does that much, she’ll also discover his family’s link to Na’ura’s lost love.
Can I get a visual?
Yes! Here are some selections from my vision board. If you're as nerdy as I am, you can click on the images for an explanation.
Why was I the one to write this book?
A handful of times in my life, I have genuinely *remembered* someone the first time I met them. It is such a startling and fascinating sensation that I needed to invent an explanation for it. This book is my best attempt.
Inspired by a Cherokee ancestor of mine, I wrote a modernized, realistic reimagining of a Native American "Orpheus myth" (musician braves the afterworld to bring back his love). I used the myth as a framework to explore Jung’s synchronicity concept—how events (and in this case, people) can be meaningfully connected when there’s no empirical explanation. My story proposes the answer that some bonds are strong enough to survive the hereafter.
In terms of qualifications, I studied ethnomusicology at The University of North Texas, which gave me a decent foundation in music theory and came in handy while writing from the perspective of musicians. I gave up my last apartment in 2015 and I've been entirely nomadic ever since, living and working in sixty different countries across all seven continents. I've personally smelt, tasted, and experienced life in the majority of the 14 countries visited by the novel (all but Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Kazakhstan).
One of my main characters is British, and his bits are written in British English rather than American English. I may be an American wanderer, but I do spend more time in London than any other place on earth (4-7 months each year for the last ten years). This means that I get teased by my American friends for speaking British, but also makes it possible to write in a British voice.
Another main character faces the formidable task of confronting and overcoming debilitating stage fright in order to play her music. Between 2014 and 2016, I faced the same in order to pursue my acting. It was one of the most grueling processes I've been through. It took hypnotherapy, EFT, anti-anxiety drugs, so many sleepless nights and eminently supportive friends, and countless hours of writing like a madwoman to get through it. I didn't stop until I was comfortable performing Shakespeare naked in Central Park (yes, that Central Park). It was an all-female version of The Tempest produced by Torn Out Theater to promote body positivity and, when I was more excited than scared on opening day, I knew I had won.
Inspired by a Cherokee ancestor of mine, I wrote a modernized, realistic reimagining of a Native American "Orpheus myth" (musician braves the afterworld to bring back his love). I used the myth as a framework to explore Jung’s synchronicity concept—how events (and in this case, people) can be meaningfully connected when there’s no empirical explanation. My story proposes the answer that some bonds are strong enough to survive the hereafter.
In terms of qualifications, I studied ethnomusicology at The University of North Texas, which gave me a decent foundation in music theory and came in handy while writing from the perspective of musicians. I gave up my last apartment in 2015 and I've been entirely nomadic ever since, living and working in sixty different countries across all seven continents. I've personally smelt, tasted, and experienced life in the majority of the 14 countries visited by the novel (all but Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Kazakhstan).
One of my main characters is British, and his bits are written in British English rather than American English. I may be an American wanderer, but I do spend more time in London than any other place on earth (4-7 months each year for the last ten years). This means that I get teased by my American friends for speaking British, but also makes it possible to write in a British voice.
Another main character faces the formidable task of confronting and overcoming debilitating stage fright in order to play her music. Between 2014 and 2016, I faced the same in order to pursue my acting. It was one of the most grueling processes I've been through. It took hypnotherapy, EFT, anti-anxiety drugs, so many sleepless nights and eminently supportive friends, and countless hours of writing like a madwoman to get through it. I didn't stop until I was comfortable performing Shakespeare naked in Central Park (yes, that Central Park). It was an all-female version of The Tempest produced by Torn Out Theater to promote body positivity and, when I was more excited than scared on opening day, I knew I had won.
Why will it sell?
More people are traveling now than ever before. After declining during 2020, global travel revenue broke pre-pandemic records in 2023. Many of these people are first-time travelers. They're scared, they're excited, and they want to learn from experienced globe-trotters like me. Millennials drove a huge part of the growth in leisure travel expenditures in 2023, and 59% of them prefer fiction to nonfiction. I say the world is hungry for a travel novel.
From a more timeless perspective, we love to watch the play-by-play as normal people become extraordinarily successful. We love to see how it happens when a band or an artist makes it big. That's why the film A Star is Born was a hit in 1937, again in 1954, again in 1976, and again in 2018. It's why Daisy Jones & The Six (Taylor Jenkins Reid) sold over a million copies and was made into an Amazon miniseries.
More comparable titles:
From a more timeless perspective, we love to watch the play-by-play as normal people become extraordinarily successful. We love to see how it happens when a band or an artist makes it big. That's why the film A Star is Born was a hit in 1937, again in 1954, again in 1976, and again in 2018. It's why Daisy Jones & The Six (Taylor Jenkins Reid) sold over a million copies and was made into an Amazon miniseries.
More comparable titles:
- The Shapeshifter & The Scribe combines the mystical undercurrent of Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water with one of the defining themes of Shelley Read’s Go As a River—the consequences of multiracial love in the middle of the 20th century.
- Another comparable recent debut is When We Were Birds (Ayanna Lloyd Banwo), a love story that spans generations, incorporates folklore, and speculates on the mysteries of the afterlife.
- Like Life After Life (Kate Atkinson) and The Luminaries (Eleanor Catton), it engages with the Mysteries (of life and of what comes after) in unexpected ways