The barren northern wastes are the only home Ysabel has ever known, but staying there will kill her.  Finding the trees which haunt her dreams is her only hope.

To save her life, Ysabel’s father arranges for her to marry Matthew, a duke.  Leaving behind everything to travel south to Matthew, Ysabel discovers her own powers with the dryads her mother once ruled.

This is exactly what Matthew’s mother, the Duchess, hoped for, but her plans are turned awry when her son actually falls in love with his betrothed.  The Duchess knows Ysabel’s true birthright and won’t hesitate to destroy anyone – even her own son – who stands in the way of her controlling the power the half-dryad girl possesses.

But Ysabel doesn’t know her link with the dryads is feeding a growing taste for blood and revenge.  She is still half-human, though, and her soul won’t last long on the dark path she begins to embrace.

Blood of Trees was born of a short story, Weeping Willow, which I wrote for a short story class in 2008.

Just a warning – I tend to turn a lot of my short stories into novels. I think most of my novels/novels-in-progress have spawned from short stories.

When I brainstorm, I usually sit down with pen and paper, and just start thinking of different ‘What if?’ scenarios. Usually they are ignited by something going on in my life, but that day I was struck with the image of a young woman running through a forest, and she was crying.

I didn’t get anything else about the story that, but the image wouldn’t leave me. When I sat down with ‘her’ again, she finally began to tell me who she was.

In the beginning, she was Isabel (this was before I’d read Twilight. And then I read it and went “Well, crap.” So her name is now Ysabel.), she was half-dryad, and she’d just lost everything.

But she’d only just discovered she was half-dryad, and in addition to being confused about who she was, she know had to deal with a devastating loss.

Sadly, the first draft of this story is so full of plot holes that I can walk through them with another one of me stacked on my head. But I’ve been brainstorming and thinking, and while it’s going to take a major re-write, the story is salvageable.

And it’s going to be epic.