Open Desert - Feena

A few months ago I was working on a pitch project that takes place in the desert. It's about two sisters who get thrown into a prison labor camp, and after teaming up with a fellow inmate the three of them escape and explore their world as fugitives and go on crazy adventures. It was a character story with each of the three main characters having their own arc. It would be a single lengthy book(Or possibly 2?). I'm going to be posting stuff with Feena, the primary main character now, and the other two will follow later.

Also... HOLY CRUD this is from 2009, that's how long I've had these characters and this story, of course it was very different back then, but still... it's crazy that they've been around for so long...


FEENA- She's a tomboy in every sense of the word and then some. Most of the time she's mistaken for a boy and she rarely corrects people for calling her one. In her world it's a lot easier for men as they have more freedom and are taken more seriously. However since she looks like a boy she's treated like a kid and it makes her quite angry. When she's thrown into the prison labor camp she decides to outright portray herself as a boy in order to protect herself and her sister. She and her sister are very close, but not in a healthy way, Feena enables her sister's laziness and is constantly protecting her and taking care of her to the point where Feena has very little self worth or self importance. Feena is a pretty good fighter, but her small frame makes it hard to fight against stronger opponents, she makes up for it in speed.

This story has been with me for awhile, it's morphed into a few different things at different points but I'm pretty happy with it now.

Really the dynamic between the three main characters is going to be super fun to work with, I'm excited about it. Their growth throughout the story is something I'm really looking forward to also since it's in a much shorter format than I've been working with before. When I shop it around to publishers, I'm also keeping in mind that I may just self-publish it too, we'll see. 

In the original version of the story, Feena and her sister enter a competition for an awesome treasure map, and along the way they fight the other contestants in multiple different environments. So while I ditched the competition element, among other things, the travelling element to their story has been essential. I've been a sucker for travelling stories for as long as I can remember, and I feel like it went along well with the internal journey all the characters were facing too.

Hope you enjoyed hearing about 'Open Desert', I'm gonna be posting more about it later, so be on the lookout.