So I’ve fin­ished my first draft of my young-adult fan­tasy, Quiver. Word count: 62,241. If I was writ­ing one of the Ele­men­tal Assas­sin books, I’d need about 30,000 more words. But I think 62K is a good start for a YA. I’m think­ing the final book will be between 70-75K.

After about six false starts, I finally think I’ve nailed down how I want the story to go. My main char­ac­ter, Gwen, is sort of a Scar­let Pim­per­nel meets Robin Hood type. With magic. Here is some­thing resem­bling a blurb:

After her father’s mur­der, Gwen Frost has taken up his legacy as the Hood, an out­law who haunts the forests around the capi­tol city of Cado­gan. Gwen has a Tal­ent or magic for sight, which has led her to become one of the best archers in all the Thir­teen King­doms. By day, Gwen robs the cor­rupt nobles who travel through the for­est and gives their money to those who need it. At night, she mas­quer­ades as Lady Gwen­dolyn, a spoiled, wannabe princess who seems to care for noth­ing but spend­ing her inher­i­tance on her extrav­a­gant wardrobe as fast as she can.

But when Gwen inad­ver­tantly thwarts on assas­si­na­tion attempt on Prince Percy St. John, she finds her­self work­ing to stop a scheme that threat­ens the entire king­dom — and vows to finally bring her father’s killer to justice …

I don’t know why this draft was so hard for me to write. Maybe because I’ve never writ­ten a YA before, so I was unsure about the voice. Maybe because my first plot sucked out loud. Maybe because it’s been win­ter, and I’ve just felt slug­gish and lazy.

Any­way, here’s the first chap­ter for your read­ing enjoy­ment. (And please excuse the for­mat­ting if it is wonky or if there’s a word or two miss­ing. I had to go through and delete all the code, and I just never know what Word­Press is going to do to the type until I hit post). Happy read­ing! :ww:

QUIVER — CHAPTER ONE

You could say that I was born to be an out­law. That it was in my blood. That it was my call­ing, my des­tiny. Just like it had been my father’s before me.

You could claim that I’d done every­thing I could to fol­low in his foot­steps. That I’d been eager to learn every sin­gle thing my father could teach me about thiev­ing, fight­ing, spy­ing. That trou­ble always seemed to find me whether I wanted it to or not.

And it had all started, inno­cently enough, deep in the for­est with a bow and a quiver full of arrows. Just like now …

“You’re going to miss.” The gruff, fem­i­nine voice sounded close to my ear. “And miss badly.”

I blocked out the voice. Blocked out the damp, mossy ground beneath my booted feet, the gloomy words of doom, the warm breath tick­ling my nose with its sharp fla­vor of liver and onions. I blocked it all out until there was noth­ing left but the smooth bow in my hands and the brown smear of my tar­get in the distance.

I lifted the bow, notched the arrow, and drew back the string with one fluid move­ment. A com­fort­ing motion, as famil­iar to me as a waltz or reel might be to any other young noble lady.

“You’re going to miss,” the voice repeated, but it was a mere mur­mur now, a buzzing bee in the background.

My green eyes nar­rowed, and I stud­ied my tar­get, using the spark of magic I pos­sessed to pull it into focus, until the brown smear filled my vision with crys­tal clar­ity. A breeze gusted through the for­est, bring­ing with it the rich smell of damp earth. Barely a whis­per against my cheek, but I adjusted my aim accord­ingly. My fin­gers rested on the bow­string the way a musician’s might on a cher­ished violin.

“You’re going to miss—”

I let go.

The arrow sliced through the air, a flash­ing sil­ver blur, before hit­ting a small wooden knot on a tree two hun­dred yards in front of me. Dead center.

I grinned and turned to face the ogre behind me. “Does that look like a miss to you, Olivia? Because to me, it looks like a bull’s-eye. Which means you owe me five gold crowns. In addi­tion to the two you lost ten min­utes ago when I speared that leaf at a hun­dred yards.”

Olivia Oglethorp straight­ened up to her full six-foot-five height, crossed her arms over her chest, and gave me a sour look. “So you’ve proven once again what a fine shot you are, despite my attempts to dis­tract you, killed another unsus­pect­ing tree, and emp­tied my purse at the same time. Hardly note­wor­thy achieve­ments, Gwen.”

A famil­iar scowl pulled down Olivia’s lips, and she scrunched up her but­ton nose in dis­plea­sure. The ogre’s eyes gleamed like two pieces of sil­ver set beneath the dark brown of her hair. Her skin was a pale gray. A bow not unlike my own hooked over Olivia’s right shoul­der, although her weapon was much taller and thicker than mine, given her height and enor­mous strength. Olivia looked toward the tree. Another breeze ruf­fled the sil­ver feath­ers on the end of my arrow.

“Still, there was a bit of wind,” she said in a kinder tone. “Well enough to earn my money, I suppose.”

I hid a smile. Olivia Oglethorp might appear to be a grump, but she was really a softie at heart. No mat­ter how many times I bested her with my bow and arrow, she always took it in stride, despite the fact that at twenty, she was two years older than me and sev­eral leagues stronger.

“Come on, Gwen,” Olivia said. “Let’s go get your arrow and get into posi­tion. The coach is sup­posed to be com­ing through here any minute.”

The ogre headed in the direc­tion of my arrow, tak­ing care to step lightly through the snaking vines and autumn leaves so she wouldn’t leave an obvi­ous trail mark­ing her pas­sage. I didn’t know how the ogre did it, since she was almost twice my size and weight, but she could van­ish into the thick foliage even bet­ter than I could.

“What’s the cargo today?” I asked, walk­ing behind her. “More gold crowns to line Bishop’s fat pock­ets? Exotic spices for his kitchen? Expen­sive silks for his wardrobe?”

Olivia shrugged. “Celia didn’t say. Only that a coach car­ry­ing some noble was com­ing this way. Celia thought the Hood would want to know so she could lighten the noble’s purse, like usual.”

My heart ached with a famil­iar, bit­ter pain. The Hood. That’s what they’d called my father. The mys­te­ri­ous out­law who haunted the forests around the cap­i­tal city of Cado­gan, steal­ing from the rich to feed the poor, right­ing wrongs, and gen­er­ally thumb­ing his nose at cor­rupt nobles like Lord Bishop, whose only desire was to increase his own wealth and power—no mat­ter who got hurt in the process.

My father, Tar­rant Frost, had always told me that some­body had to stand up to Bishop and those like him, that some­body had to watch out for those who couldn’t defend them­selves, that some­body had to do the right thing, even if his meth­ods seemed wrong. After Bishop had mur­dered my father six months ago, that job had fallen to me.

Now, I was the Hood. A noto­ri­ous out­law. A clever thief. A tough fighter. And a lonely, angry girl who still very much missed her father.

We reached the tree I’d skew­ered with my arrow. Olivia grum­bled under her breath when she real­ized I’d hit the very cen­ter of the tiny knot. More sad­ness filled my chest. My father would have been so proud of the dif­fi­cult shot.

Olivia looked at the sil­ver pro­jec­tile, then at me. “It’s not going to explode in my face if I touch it, is it?”

“Nope, this one is just a plain old arrow. No fire, no ice, no webs, no explo­sions.” I grinned. “I’m sav­ing the good stuff for the coach.”

Olivia snorted, then reached for­ward and pulled the arrow out of the tree. She handed it to me, then moved through the for­est toward our usual ambush spot.

I stayed where I was, my fin­gers lin­ger­ing on the slick sur­face of the arrow. The sil­ver­thorn pro­jec­tile matched the com­pos­ite long bow slung over my shoul­der. They’d both been gifts from my father, Tar­rant, the last ones he’d given me before he’d died from Bishop’s poi­soned blade. My father had been a renowned archer, one of the best in all the Thir­teen King­doms. My favorite mem­o­ries were of walk­ing through these woods with him, as he taught me how to antic­i­pate the wind and thread my arrows between the thick trees and leafy foliage.

“Come on, Gwen!” Olivia called out. “Or you’ll miss your chance to humil­i­ate Lord Bishop yet again.”

“We can’t have that, now can we?” I murmured.

I slid the arrow into the quiver strapped to my back. The black leather case had been another gift from my father. The same one he’d used for so many years, stamped with the Frost fam­ily crest—a tiny ring of jagged sil­ver ici­cles cir­cling the let­ter F, also made of icicles.

By the time I reached Olivia, the ogre had already grabbed hold of the vine rope that would spring our trap—two large trees in the mid­dle of the path that ran through the for­est. Olivia pulled down the rope, and the two trees lifted into upright posi­tions, as though they were just as strong, sturdy, and straight as those around them. The trees each weighed sev­eral hun­dred pounds, but Olivia used the rope to hoist them into place as though they were noth­ing more than slen­der saplings. All ogres were strong, but Olivia Oglethorp had a bit of magic as well, a Tal­ent for strength that would let her pick up and throw houses, if only she could get her hands under­neath them to try.

Once the trees were in posi­tion, Olivia tied off the rope, and we set­tled into the under­brush to wait. When the coach arrived, Olivia would release the rope, and the trees would fall, block­ing the track. I’d spring out from the shad­ows and demand money from the nobles for safe pas­sage through the for­est. If they refused, they’d have to back­track for hours to find a way around the fallen trees. If they agreed to pay my toll, then Olivia would lift the trees once more, and we’d col­lect their purses and send them on their merry way.

It was a sim­ple scheme I’d learned from my father that Olivia and I had run dozens of times before in var­i­ous spots through­out the thick woods. Much to Lord Bishop’s con­ster­na­tion, since the safety of trav­el­ers through the for­est was his responsibility—and those I robbed were his noble friends, each one as crooked, greedy, and power-hungry as he was.

While we waited, I brushed my fin­gers against my cloak pin—a small bit of sil­ver shaped like the Frost fam­ily crest. Touch­ing the metal was my own lit­tle good luck rit­ual, some­thing I did before every bat­tle, no mat­ter how big or small.

Then, I pulled up the hood of my hunter green cloak to hide my wavy black hair from sight. The gar­ment was some­thing else that had belonged to my father. A cloak wasn’t much of a dis­guise, and Bishop would have dis­cov­ered my real iden­tity long ago, if this had been an ordi­nary cloak. But the enchanted fab­ric always blended in per­fectly with what­ever shad­ows or back­ground sur­rounded it. More impor­tantly, the hood cast the wearer’s face in dark­ness that no light or magic could penetrate.

Hence the nick­name my father had been given—the Hood. The out­law man­tle I’d taken up after his mur­der. And the very last thing Lord Bishop would see before he died on the end of my blade.

Beside me, Olivia pulled up the hood of her own cloak. In addi­tion to obscur­ing Olivia’s fea­tures, the enchanted fab­ric also had the effect of hid­ing her true size, mak­ing her seem much shorter. The cloak was some­thing Celia Cruz had made espe­cially for the ogre, after she’d recruited us to work for her.

Olivia cocked her head to one side. “Here it comes.”

The ogre’s hear­ing was sharper than mine, so it took a few sec­onds before I heard the creak of wheels churn­ing against the for­est floor. I nod­ded, reached back, and drew an arrow from my quiver. Unlike the one I’d shot at the tree that had ordi­nary feath­ers on the end, this one fea­tured a thick, sticky sub­stance that resem­bled maple syrup. When fired, the end of the shaft would explode in a shower of spi­der webs strong enough to hold most crea­tures. I had only a small knowl­edge of spell­craft, but I’d learned how to mix together cer­tain potions and pow­ders to give my arrows some­thing extra.

A minute later, the coach squeaked into view. The vehi­cle was smaller than I’d expected, lit­tle more than a wooden cart with a roof over it, pulled only by a sin­gle horse. My eyes flicked to the dri­ver, a large, mus­cled man with a shaved head and a thick scar that ran down his left cheek. I used my magic, my Tal­ent, to pull him into sharper focus, search­ing for any sign this might be a trap. Lord Bishop had recently raised the price on the Hood’s head to one hun­dred gold crowns, and I wasn’t going to take any fool­ish chances. Celia Cruz’s orders or not.

Another breeze whis­tled through the for­est, push­ing back the driver’s black cloak. I spot­ted a broadsword strapped to his belt, along with a brace of dag­gers. Unease twisted my stomach.

“Something’s not right about this,” I whis­pered. “That doesn’t look like a noble car­riage to me. And he cer­tainly doesn’t look like a com­mon dri­ver. He’s too well-armed.”

Olivia shrugged. “Maybe Bishop’s get­ting more cre­ative with his traps.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

To my sur­prise, the coach slowed to a stop about fifty feet away from our hid­ing place. The mus­cu­lar dri­ver hopped to the ground and opened the door. Another man stepped out of the vehi­cle. He threw back the hood of his black cloak, reveal­ing dark, choco­late brown hair, and turned in my direc­tion. He was young, about twenty or so, with ruddy cheeks, mid­night blue eyes, and a slightly crooked nose that had obvi­ously been bro­ken at one point.

His cloak cov­ered his tunic and trousers, so I couldn’t get a good look at them, but the fab­ric didn’t seem to be par­tic­u­larly fine. No gold or sil­ver thread adorned the edges of his cloak, and no jew­eled rings sparkled on his fin­gers. He didn’t appear to be a wealthy noble at all.

“We shouldn’t be stop­ping,” the dri­ver grum­bled, his brown eyes scan­ning the for­est. “We can make it to the cas­tle by three if we push on.”

“We’ll be leav­ing in a minute, Gareth,” the young man said in a deep, bari­tone voice. “I just needed to stretch my legs a bit.”

The young man turned, reached back into the coach, and pulled out a small wine­skin. He unscrewed the top and took a long swig from it.

Gareth, the dri­ver, arched a bushy black eye­brow. “Just wanted to stretch your legs, eh, Percy?”

“And wet my throat, of course.”

The young man, Percy, grinned and took another sip of wine. He reached into the coach once more and came out with two pink apples. He tossed one of them to Gareth, then sank his teeth in the other one. I could hear the juicy crunch of the sweet fruit even from here.

Olivia nudged me with her elbow. “What do you want to do? Shall I lower the trees?”

The young man didn’t appear to be any kind of threat, but appear­ances were often deceiv­ing. If he’d been alone, I might have con­sid­ered going through with my scheme. But my gaze kept drift­ing back to Gareth, the dri­ver. Even as he ate his apple, Gareth kept his hand near his sword, his brown eyes peer­ing into the for­est, search­ing for any sign of trou­ble. Just the way a trained war­rior would. And that wide, slash­ing scar on his left cheek told me that Gareth had seen at least one fight in his life—and lived to tell about it.

“No,” I whis­pered. “He seems too eager to draw his sword for my lik­ing. Let them pass.”

Olivia and I remained in our hid­ing spot watch­ing the trav­el­ers. After the two men fin­ished their apples and tossed their cores into the trees for the birds, Percy turned back to Gareth.

“All right, Gareth,” the young man said. “I’m ready to go—”

That was all Percy got out before an arrow whis­tled by his head and buried itself in the side of the wooden coach.

So what do you think? Good, bad, indif­fer­ent? Share in the comments.