So this is not a mermaidly post, but it is a post about very glamorous, otherworldly, excessively glamorous creature not unlike the mermaid, the swan maiden. Because my next book is about to come out next month, my first middle-grade novel, and it’s called The Next Full Moon and is about a 12-year-old girl who begins to grow feathers and eventually discovers that her mother was (and is) a swan maiden… So the girl feels like a freak and an outcast until she discovers that she is, instead, magical. As you do.
The swans were strangely still, the mass of their white feathers gleaming like ice, like freshly fallen snow, over the clearing.
“They have all come,” Helen said finally. “To meet you.”
“What do you mean?” Ava asked.
“Watch.”
And just as she said the word, something happened. The birds… transformed. In a movement so quick and surprising Ava could barely register it, the birds had arms and hands and their feathers became feathered robes and suddenly the clearing was filled with beautiful women, each of them holding a feathered robe in her hand.
There are a number of swan maiden legends in which a man steals a maiden’s feathered robe while she’s bathing, and forces her to stay with him. They have a child/children. Eventually, the swan maiden retrieves her robe, returns to her swan form, and flies away. My story’s about what happens to the child she leaves behind, as she nears her thirteenth birthday.
And it has a pretty cover:
And if you click on the link below you can read the first few chapters, which will likely change your life.
If you want to learn more about swan maidens, in all their strangeness and beauty, their living between the earth and the air, check out the page on the SurLaLune Fairy Tales site.
I am a mermaid 
Your style is captivating, your words are magical! Thank you for sharing your talent!
I am so excited for this book! I love your writing and I’ve shared your books with those close to me!
Yay!!! A new story! My favorite book is Mermaid and I am a loyal reader! I ❤ your sense of glamor and the way you captivate my attention. love. love. love.
The background story is similar to a famous Chinese myth :))) I just love how you play with stories 🙂
We of the siren persuasion are very VERY pleased to see you have raised swan maiden awareness… and done it so elegantly! Can’t wait to read it from cover to gorgeous cover
I want to read that 🙂