What’s your one line pitch or teaser for the book? Grab a reader’s attention with one line.
One young woman’s time is running out. Her destiny lies in the past...
Tell readers a little about your main character or characters?
Courtney is a college undergrad in 2004, and a forgotten archetype nowadays - the preppy Abercrombie girl who listens to punk rock and indie and college emo. She’s lonely and damaged from a life where nobody has ever wanted her, but she’s beginning to sense that something isn’t right. She’s got a summer job at her University Archives, and research on a new project turns into something else when she finds herself haunted by a dusty set of yearbooks from the 1920s. Soon nothing is what it seems, and she loses the ability to tell where 2004 ends and the 1920s begin. She meets Sadie - a girl dressed in long-outdated clothes, using long-outdated slang, and the two become fast friends even as reality breaks down around them. But Courtney’s uneasy feelings were right. Dark forces are closing in, and they won’t rest until she’s dead.
In another time, Sadie gathers the unlikeliest collection of allies in a desperate attempt to rescue Courtney before it’s too late. And even if they can bring her home alive, the battle has just begun.
Courtney has been a constant source of surprise for me as well as for readers, and I think that’s what I love so much about her. I never know what will come out of her mouth; she’s always ready with a barbed wit and the perfect reply for any situation. I’ll be writing a scene and suddenly Courtney will say something that has me sobbing with laughter. But at her deepest level Courtney is driven by unimaginable love, and she’s all too ready to throw herself into incredible danger, against hopeless odds, for her friends and newly-found family. She’s incredibly smart, resourceful, tenacious, and determined. She’s pretty and she’s sweet and full of love. She’s hilarious and just a little bit awkward. She’s fierce and brave, daring and courageous, even quite rash. And by the end of the book, she’s a total badass.
Where do you like to write? Do you have an office or writing nook?
Actually, it’s funny you ask. One of my biggest distractions right now is trying to build one. My wife and I just moved into an Edwardian house (built in 1900) that came with a finished half-attic, but it was really barebones - all drywall and gray paint. So I’ve been working on turning it into a fully Edwardian space - wood and brass and everything. I never realized how much work it is to do something like that. But it’s rewarding - and it’s already the kind of room where you can relax and travel to another era. Once it’s done I plan to move up there and get started in earnest on the second Flapper Covenant novel. I can’t wait, honestly.
What is one of your best marketing tips for other authors?
I wish I had advice - any advice at all. Marketing has been really difficult for me, and it doesn’t help that I’ve written something that’s hard to package and mass-produce. I don’t mean to sound like a pretentious hipster or anything; I’m only saying that I seem to have written something pretty hard to categorize, and selling something is easier if it’s categorized.
So I guess that’s my first piece of advice - if your main goal is to sell books, then write something that fits well within established genres. Romance novels seem to practically sell themselves.
If you’re like me and you’ve created something that’s hard to place, then here’s my second piece of advice: marketing success seems to lie in thinking outside the box. If your novel is outside the box, then you’ll need to stay there to market it, too. Unless you’ve got a bougie agent and a contract with a big publisher, you’ll be selling your own book, and the first thing you’re up against is snobbery. And that’s everywhere - reviewers only want traditionally-published work and so do most online magazines, apparently. Because all indie books suck and all traditionally-published work is good.
[cold smirk]
Yeah, that was sarcasm.
Anyway, my third piece of advice, and maybe the most important - figure out what your book is about and who your target audience is. For me, this has actually been really difficult, too - my book isn’t “about” one thing in particular and there’s no one demographic that enjoys it exclusively. But it’s still been important for me to figure out a quick way to pitch my books and the likeliest category of people to pitch it to, because a lot of my marketing has been done in person. Nobody pays attention to online ads anymore - it’s just more background noise. You have to figure out exactly the right people to go after and a way to get around their noise screens. No book appeals to everyone, or even a wide group. Identify a small niche and figure out how to spark their attention.
I’m still trying to learn the rest, and I haven’t been as successful at marketing my work as I’d hoped at first. It’s so easy to get worn down and demoralized.
What websites or tools have you found that offer the best results?
For writing itself, I’m a really visual/tactile person. I’ve got this low-grade synesthesia thing going on (and a lot of difficulty visualizing things clearly) so I need to incorporate as many senses as possible to make the story a reality for myself. Right now the main tool I’m using is Milanote. It’s really freeform, so if I’m making a character profile or something, I drag a picture in, then the right kind of text box from the sidebar, and then an mp3 from my music folder for the right song to associate with her. You could do the same thing with a Youtube video or any other link. You can do all your world-building, character relationships, plotting, and storyboarding in there - the only thing Milanote really doesn’t do well is the actual word processing. When it comes time to write the actual drafts, I go back to Novel Factory or Google Docs. A lot of people swear by Scrivener but I feel like Scrivener has all the complexity without any of the flexibility. I’m not a fan of Scrivener.
Though it feels like program developers are finally making good software for authors, which is amazing. I’m really excited to see what will become available in the next few years.
I’ve also been seeing ads for Dabble, which looks a bit like Scrivener without a lot of the needless complexity. I’m kinda curious about that.
Any advice for aspiring writers?
Nothing they need to be told from me. :) Write for you; don’t fall into that trap of seeking an audience and prematurely trying to market your work as you write it. That one has been so difficult for me to avoid - sorta like stopping my leg from moving when the doctor taps it with the rubber reflex thingy. I guess I must be hardwired to feel like my writing is only successful when people like it, and I have to discover another metric to measure success for myself.
Because it does feel so good when people are absolutely blown away by your work, when they finish your book and they’re like “I want more!”. And really I think the only way we’re gonna get that is if we can fill our books with as much enjoyment as possible during the writing process.
But then again, I already mentioned that I’m still trying to figure out how to spark wider reader interest. So maybe I’m not the best author to be giving advice on this particular question.
The Flapper Covenant Series
Book One
Cassandra Yorke
Genre: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, LGBTQ+
Time Travel, Time Travel Romance
Date of Publication: March 30, 2020
ISBN: 9780578680361
ASIN: B086HYTB3Q
Number of pages: 414
Word Count: 108,498
Cover Artist: Cassandra Yorke
Tagline: A gripping tale of best friends and romance, sorcery and survival, at the dawn of the Roaring 20s.
Author Commentary: This novel is a memoir wrapped in fiction. While it's a tale of time travel and sorcery, at its core are real events and real themes - haunted yearbooks in college archives, yearning for times long gone, battery and abuse, exile and homecoming.
While I hope you enjoy it, I promise you will never read another story like it. It's from the heart, it's gritty and lurid - and below the action, it's real.
Book Description:
A young woman born in the wrong reality.
A destiny that will lead her into the past.
And a love so enduring it reaches across time - and existence itself - to bring her home.
Courtney is a lonely undergrad at secluded Braddock College in 2004, working a drowsy summer job in the Archives. Assigned to a new project, she becomes haunted by a college yearbook from the 1920s - filled with familiar faces and memories of times she never experienced. A chance encounter with a mysterious girl named Sadie - dressed in long-outdated clothes - alters her reality. But if you were never meant to be born, that reality can expel you like an infection - or kill you outright. While Courtney struggles against forces she cannot comprehend, a psychopathic stalker smells blood and closes in for the kill.
Sadie, now in 1921, races against the clock to save her friend, joined by some remarkable allies - an American combat sorceress and veteran of World War I, an enigmatic professor who specializes in piercing the veil between realities, and two young women who insist they’re Courtney’s oldest friends - one of them even claiming to be her truest love.
Time is running out for Courtney, and a terrifying wilderness - haunted by the dead from centuries past - may hold the key to her salvation. But none who enter have ever returned…
Cassandra Yorke's groundbreaking debut brings Magical Realism home to the Midwest in an explosive new style, blending midwestern gothic and historical fiction with a warm lesbian love story to create a riveting, deeply immersive epic you won't be able to put down. It's the world of Boardwalk Empire and Gatsby, with an urgent, immersive narrative about what it means to belong, what it means to be hated, what it means to be loved, and ultimately what it means to come home.
Excerpt
The crosswalk is the busiest place in town any time of the year, and even if
Braddock has a fraction of the people in the summer, it’s still bustling. As
I’m coming up, I spot a girl approaching from my left. She’s ghostly pale like
me, with auburn hair cut in a short bob around her soft jawline. The most
striking thing about her is her narrow, almond-shaped eyes. I’ve always thought
chicks with eyes like that are really cute. They catch mine as I approach, and
there’s a kind of click; two people in a crowd with matching energy. She greets
me with a narrow, witty smile. I return hers in my usual unintentional way,
soft and genuine and a little bit sad-looking without ever meaning to seem that
way. And we stand there for a minute, waiting for the traffic to clear.
“Say, is it gonna be dry like this all week?” she asks.
“Um…” I wish I had a better answer ready. “I think so? I haven’t
really checked the weather.”
“Why, I sure hope it is.” She stares back across the street at the
shade of College Green. “Anything I hate is rain in the summer.”
Roll my eyes in agreement. “Ugh, totally.”
I sneak a look at her. She’s wearing a brown bell-shaped hat, the kind
that were popular in the 1920s. She’s wearing a 20s style dress, too: green,
knee-length, with a round-cut neckline and loose cap sleeves. She’s even
wearing old-fashioned brown stockings and brown heels. It catches my eye and I
stare for a second or two; it’s a hot day for stockings, especially the
old-fashioned silk kind like that. And her shoes are really retro, like old
church grandma shoes. She must shop at that vintage thrift store all the way up
at the far end of Court Street; it’s the only place around here where you could
get clothes like that, unless she goes thrifting in Columbus.
She’s standing here next to me, watching the street, not self-conscious
at all. Like she wears stuff like that every day without even thinking about
it.
Then she looks at me, glances away, looks at me again a little longer.
Her eyes linger on my top and on my legs, and she looks away again, blushing.
I’ve always been a little bit empathic and I can feel curiosity in her glance.
And…attraction?
Nah, that can’t be right - girls are never into me. Maybe I look too
preppy, I don’t know. I’m a D&D nerd, raised on video games from the age of
five, but because I wear an Abercrombie hoodie or Hollister shorts or flat iron
my hair, people assign me a whole package of expectations - Courtney is a
bitch, Courtney’s stuck-up, Courtney’s a backstabbing gossip, Courtney’s rich.
Courtney is heterosexual...? Look, I’ll be honest with you, I’m gonna have a
hard time living up to all of that. Maybe not the bitch thing - because yeah,
I’m probably a bitch - but the rest of it?
Sorry, no can do.
The traffic finally stops from the other direction. I give her one last
smile - which she returns warmly - and step onto the street. A few quick steps
take me to the other sidewalk. I stop and look at my slender Fossil watch,
making a pretense to turn in her direction again for one last look. She’s
awfully cute, and I love her chic vintage style. I wonder if she’d think I was
creepy if-
There’s nobody there. I glance around to see if she took off in another
direction. Nothing. There are plenty of people around, walking dogs, wearing
flip-flops, riding bikes. But no girls with vintage clothes.
She’s gone. It’s like she was never there.
But she totally was there! I talked to her!
Unless I’m finally losing it?
I rub an eye with the heel of my hand, not really caring that I just
stamped dry mascara on my skin. Maybe I need to get out more. Maybe I need
friends. I stand on the busy sidewalk for a moment, completely disoriented,
before remembering that I was looking for a place to sit down and eat my salad.
But even as I make my way onto College Green and up toward the Civil War
statue, looking for a place to sit, I can’t get that girl out of my head. Not
just because she was cute. Something about her, that weird click when we saw
each other.
Eh, maybe I’ll see her again. I shove a straw through the lid of my
drink. Nobody just vanishes.
I wish you could just disappear.
Though I guess if you wanted to disappear, this would
be the place to do it. Outside the city limits, the nights are dark and old,
and people who vanish are never seen again.
About the Author:
Cassandra's life was changed forever when she was taken captive by a haunted college yearbook as an Ohio University senior in the summer of 2004. Ten years later, she started work on Mary, Everything to make sense of the experience. Bathed in summer sunlight and crafted from early 2000s punk rock, Cassandra's goal is more than just telling a story - she wants to take you captive, too.
She lives in central Ohio with her wife, house rabbits, and video games.
And of course, her own ghostly memories.
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