I'm so excited to share that my second novel IF I PROMISE YOU WINGS is due out 1/16/2024.
Yippee!
What's crazy is that I started the first draft in the spring of 2019, and basically wrote it throughout the pandemic, and turns out: it's about grief. Surprise! :O)
It’s another YA story because I love teens or am forever a 17-year-old myself. The book takes place in Paris but this time, unlike in BRIGHT BURNINGS STARS, Alix, my main character spends a lot of time in the city--in Montmartre especially, my childhood stomping grounds.
I placed the feather boutique on Rue d’Orchamps, a cobbled stoned, narrow street not far from the Sacré Cœur, a little à la Amélie, because I was born there, and because artists tend to fall in love with those sinewy streets, because long ago not a feather boutique but a hat shop or a haberdashery was open next to where I slept as a newborn, along with an all-day café where my parents used to go to make phone calls and play dice. The owner's name was Monsieur Champeau, not chapeau, which means hat. :0) Supposedly, the hats inside the shop had all kinds of wild plumes….:)
All I knew, as I drafted, aside from the 'where' was that Alix was obsessed with drawing feathers and would give up her right arm to try and make wings and I knew that her best friend Jeanne had died and left a giant hole behind her.
Have any of you ever lost a best friend? In more ways than one. It’s not talked about much in this culture. I wanted to tackle the unraveling of a deep friendship. Girl love, girl friendship is so intense, isn’t it? I wanted to know if having an art form might help soften the heartbreak. If feathers could somehow save Alix, the way ballet once saved me, the way writing saves me now.
In the pages there is an apple red guitar named Betty, lavender pompoms, an old Duchess, a Raven, and God so many plumes….I cannot wait for you all to dip in.
Send me an email if you want to chat about anything really….I’d love to know what book on Paris you’ve read and loved, what movies or shows you go back to again and again….
I know that Emilie in Paris is big right now!!!
Do you like it? And if so why? Or why not?
What did you think of ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS?
I’ll keep you updated on Goodreads giveaway. I'm dreaming of feather tattoos...:) Follow me on IG @aksmallwords! The plumes in my photo come from the Feather Place, a real feather atelier in NYC where the likes of Vera Wang come and work. Also, my favorite two feather artists in Paris are the one and only Nelly Saunier and the epic Eric Charles-Donatien. Look them up. You won't regret it.
Aurevoir mes chéries,
AK Small