DEAD MAGICAL
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It is everything.
STATUS: Querying
A young death examiner forced to relive victims’ final moments must master her increasingly unstable magic to defy a king who seeks to control it.
DEAD MAGICAL is an immersive fantasy about healing and choices. It has positive representation of managing mental health, living with disability, and represents unconventional families and consensual romance.
It’s rooted in real life experiences, except with a lot of death magic. 💀
I drafted DEAD MAGICAL directly after a therapy session. I didn’t know it then, but I was letting go of my grief and accepting my anxiety. I was respecting my trauma, forgiving my past self, and choosing then and there how to take the next step forward.
And then I wrote a happy ending. For those of you who relate, the ending is for you, too.
“Nell relives the final moments of the dead for a living, but when she's ordered to falsify a royal murder, telling the truth will incur a king's wrath…
…lying could burn her alive.”
DEAD MAGICAL is a young adult fantasy complete at 72,000 words. It has the dark and humorous tones of Nettle and Bone combined with the trauma and recovery arc of The Storm Crow.
Nell is a death examiner who relives victims’ final moments, a gift that brings closure to the grieving but leaves her burdened by the pain of the dead. Raised by her eccentric Aunt Luce—the only family who never abandoned her—Nell is determined to keep their profession alive as the only viable successor. But since the chimera attack which cost her right leg, her magic has grown increasingly unpredictable, breaking the rules set by her aunt and worsening the anxiety she struggles to hide.
When Luce is brutally attacked and the palace urgently requests a death examiner, Nell must take her place. Struggling to mirror her brilliant aunt, Nell faces an impossible demand: the king orders her to falsify the cause of a royal murder. Refusal would destroy her aunt’s livelihood, or worse, see Nell burned alive by the sentient flames known as the Law. Compliance would betray everything she and her aunt stand for. As her magic intensifies, pulling her deeper into each death, Nell forms an alliance with an overlooked potion apprentice whose unwavering support shows her there is more to life than death and responsibility. There might even be romance!
To outsmart the king and regain control of her magic, Nell must confront the trauma she’s long avoided and decide what her power—and her future—will be, even if that choice costs her the life she and her aunt built together.
I’m asking for your help
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