I'm Writing The Chronicles of Cassidy At Last!

When I started publishing almost four years ago, I was a reading intervention teacher at two different elementary schools. I worked with a lot of fourth and fifth graders who wanted to hear about my writing. They were fascinated with The Clandestine Saga, even though I never told any of them the title because that series isn't exactly for kids. I promised them, though, that someday I would write a series they could read.
My intentions were to take Cadence Findley, the main character in Clandestine, and create a series about her younger sister, Cassidy. Since the kids at school seemed to want to read about vampires, I thought Cassidy would be the perfect heroine for them. Even though it's been a long time since I initially thought of writing this series, I'm proud to say the first book in the series, So You Think Your Sister's a Vampire? is finally finished, and I'm hoping to publish it in July. I hope that those same kids who were asking so many years ago will be excited to read it, along with lots of other kids and adults who like The Clandestine Saga series.
The series will be at least three books long and will follow along as Cassidy Findley discovers something odd is going on with her older sister. It parallels The Clandestine Saga but is appropriate for kids as young as ten years old with no bad language or other inappropriate content. There will be some vampire slaying eventually, but it won't be as descriptive as the other series written for adults. I let my second grader read this book, so it's definitely fine for audiences of all ages, in my opinion, but I think grownups will like it, too.
I will be looking for people interested in receiving an Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review soon, so if you think you'd like to read it before it's published, let me know at authoridjohnson@gmail.com. Below, you'll find an excerpt to give you an idea of what the novel is all about. (Please keep in mind my editor hasn't gone through the manuscript yet!)

Young Adult Vampire Adventure, Coming Soon!

Chapter One

            You think you know someone, and then they go and turn into a creature of the night, a bloodsucker, a vampire, right before your very eyes, and then you realize, you don’t really know anyone at all, perhaps not even yourself.

           My name’s Cassidy Findley, and up until a couple of weeks ago, I was living a pretty mundane existence. I live in a small town in rural Iowa where the most exciting thing that ever happens is someone shoots a deer or a friend’s hog has piglets. No, really, those are the kinds of stories I’ve come to expect to hear in the hallways of Shenandoah High School on a Monday morning. Okay, I might be exaggerating a little bit; sometimes there are stories about who is going out with who or who met a hot stranger at the mall—which happens to be about an hour away from here in Council Bluffs, so no one can ever verify those sorts of stories. Yeah, nothing exciting ever happens in Shenandoah, that is until the night before Thanksgiving. Nothing would ever be the same after that night.

            Actually, things started to head in the direction of a downward spiral a couple of nights before that. My older sister, Cadence, is nineteen and attends college at the University of Iowa in Iowa City—well, she did go to college there, anyway. I’ll get to that soon enough. She was back in town for the week because of the holiday, and I was so happy to see her. My sister and I have always been very close—until recently.

Her whole life, my sister has talked about wanting to be an elementary school teacher, so the fact that she dropped out and took a job with some sort of security company would’ve been shocking if I hadn’t already figured out by then what was happening. Again, I’m getting ahead of myself. I guess it would make sense if I just started at the beginning.

            Cadence was super popular when she was in school. She was a cheerleader, in the choir, and in a half-dozen other clubs. I do some of those things, too, but I definitely don’t get the same sort of attention as Cadence did, which is fine. I don’t need that sort of spotlight. Not that she ever seemed to want it either, but that was just part of who she was. My sister is beautiful, with long brown hair and big brown eyes. I’ve seen guys literally crumple when she flashes them her dazzling smile. She’s totally oblivious, though. Still, being so well-liked garnered her a group of friends that went practically everywhere with her when they were in high school and a boyfriend that was the envy of all the other girls. Even after she and Jack broke up, he still continued to follow her around like a puppy dog every time she came home. So, it was no surprise that one of the voices I heard through our adjoining bedroom wall that night was his.

            I try not to eavesdrop as a rule. I think it’s underhanded and sneaky. But… my sister’s friends are loud, so I can often hear most of their conversations just by not listening to any music or watching anything on my laptop when they’re chatting. Like I said, none of what I overheard was on purpose. And sometimes I wish I hadn’t heard anything at all. But I did.

            I was sitting on my bed, trying to decide whether to watch a movie or catch up on some TV when the whole group of them came up the stairs. I closed my laptop and went into “not eavesdropping” mode. I heard Cadence’s friend Drew Peterson’s voice first. She’s still in high school and on the Varsity cheerleading squad. Since I’m on the JV squad, sometimes we practice together, and she’s usually nice to me. She has short, curly blonde hair and big blue eyes. She’s really pretty, but unlike my sister, she knows it. Drew’s the kind of girl who will use her looks to get whatever she wants, and I always wondered why my sister hung out with her when Cadence usually likes people who are more down to earth.

            I remembered that she used to date my sister’s friend Kash Donetello as soon as I heard his voice. “That’s why,” I reminded myself. Drew started hanging out with my sister when she was dating Kash, and even though they broke up a while ago, Drew has stuck to my sister like bubble gum on her Converse. She just won’t go away.

            Drew’s laughter peeled through the wall, and I heard my sister mention she has a paper that she’s got to work on. Why her friends were here while she was doing homework is beyond me, but I figured it is back to the sticky factor. Once someone has latched on to Cadence, she has a hard time shaking them.

            I heard her two other guy friends—the aforementioned Jack Cook, ex-boyfriend and star baseball player who now attends college in Nebraska, and Jon Chancellor, who decided not to go to college. Jon is one of those guys who is always joking around about everything, and although I’ve personally never thought he was particularly funny, I guess Cadence does. She has always had a strange sense of humor.

            I could hear two other female voices, too, though not well-enough to make out what they were saying. Still, I knew that they are my sisters real best friends, the ones she’d choose to keep if she had to whittle down this group. Taylor Christianson and Sidney Cox are to Cadence what my two best friends, Lucy Burk and Emma O’Sullivan, are to me. I have other friends, too, like Milo Parker and Wes Standford, and then there’s Liam White who is super cute, but I think is just using me to pass Algebra II. If I had to pick my two BFFs, though, there’s no question it would be Luce and Em hands down. I know that’s a lot of names, and for right now, you probably don’t have to worry about most of these people. The only ones that are super important are my sister, of course, and Drew. If I had known then what I know now about the fate of Drew Peterson, I would’ve burst into my sister’s bedroom and ordered everyone to go home immediately.

            But I didn’t do that because I had no idea that the conversation my sister was having through that paper-thin wall would be so significant.

            I adjusted my position on top of the floral print bedspread my mother had purchased me a few years earlier when I decided I was too old for Disney Princesses and tried not to not listen to my sister’s conversation. You’d think the walls would be thicker considering that was supposed to be the master suite. Despite the fact that Cadence had an en suite bathroom and a closet big enough to hide all of her friends should my parents ever care that she was practically throwing a party in her bedroom, I was never jealous. My parents’ bedroom was downstairs in what was meant to be a mother-in-law suite, but my Grandma Janette lives in Des Moines and my other grandparents still have each other. So, everyone else has spacious bedrooms with attached bathrooms, and I have to walk down the hall a little way to take a shower. Really not a big deal—not even a first world problem. Still, I could practically hear my sister and her friends breathing, which is why I can say I definitely wasn’t trying to hear what they were talking about.

            But I heard nonetheless. Drew was talking about an Eidolon Festival. I’d never heard that word before and thought at first that I just wasn’t hearing it correctly through the drywall, but I did what I always do when I hear a word I don’t know—I looked it up. Even before she stopped talking, I had it on Wikipedia. Since I was pretty sure she wasn’t talking about idolizing anyone, that only left one alternative. “A specter or phantom,” I read aloud, my forehead crinkling. Why would anyone want to go to a festival for that? I wondered. It definitely didn’t sound like something my sister would like. She wasn’t even a fan of Halloween. Not that she was scared; she just thought it was pointless to walk around dressed like someone you’re not, trying to scare people or collecting candy. I tended to agree with her and waited to hear her tell Drew to forget about it.

            The discussion went on for a few minutes, and I could hear Cadence saying she didn’t want to go. It sounded like Taylor was actually afraid, like she was about to cry, so I thought for sure this would be the end of the discussion. But then Drew started whining, and I know that’s my sister’s weakness. “You all went away to college and left me here,” she was saying.   

            Like kryptonite, the tears of Drew Peterson melted my sister’s iron resolve, and the next thing I hear is Cadence agreeing to go. I can hardly believe my ears. Whatever this thing is, it sounded dangerous, and it’s not even in town. They’ll have to drive to Villisca. A festival of ghosts in a town made famous for an axe murder? I’m pretty sure this is a bad idea.

            I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. You’re asking yourself, “If Cassidy Findley is such a good girl, why didn’t she get up and go tell her sister not to go?” Or, “Why didn’t she head straight downstairs and interrupt her parents’ viewing of CSI Miami to let them know her older sister was planning to lie to them and use a cover story of spending the night at Drew’s house to sneak out?” And you’re right—you’re absolutely right. I should’ve done one or both of those things. And now, here we are, a few weeks later, and everything in the world is completely different. This is a guilt I will carry with me for the rest of my life. I no longer feel like the good girl who always makes the right decisions. What I overheard that night has led me down a dark hole, one where I not only eavesdrop on every other member of my family, I’ve also become a master of deception. As a matter-of-fact, I’m pretty sure someone is dead because I didn’t stand up and say something. What’s even worse (yes, worse than death) is that, because I chose not to burst through my sister’s door and tell her not to go to that stupid festival, my sister is now a vampire; I’m almost sure of it.

Chapter Two

            The night before Thanksgiving, I went to bed a little earlier than usual. I wasn’t particularly tired, but I was worried, and I didn’t want to hang around my parents any more than I had to because I was certain they would be able to tell something was bothering me. Cadence had sat around the house most of that day, trying to act inconspicuous, but I could tell by the way she twisted the ring on her right hand that she was anxious. I wanted to ask her why she had agreed to go to this festival if she knew it was a bad idea, but she had no idea I could overhear her conversations with her friends in her bedroom, and I was still under the impression that breaking her trust would be worse than just letting her go. For the most part, my sister has good judgement, and I still expected her to find a way to talk her friends out of going.

            Ever since I’d heard Drew use that word—Eidolon—I’d been doing some research. I thought if I knew more about where they were headed, maybe I could come up with some sort of a way to trick them into not going. But no matter how much searching I’d done using the keywords I’d overheard from their conversation, nothing came up. Even though I had heard enough to know this Eidolon Festival in Villisca was supposed to be the night before Thanksgiving at the witching hour, which is 3:00 AM, nothing popped up. I’d considered asking Emma to help me because, when it comes to computers, Em’s a whiz, but I didn’t do it. I was still thinking I was overreacting, though somewhere deep down inside, I felt a stirring, like this night would be a turning point of sorts. I played it off, because that just sounds ridiculous. I wish I would’ve listened to my gut.

            We were eating dinner, chicken casserole, one of my mom’s specialties, and the table was mostly quiet except for the clatter of silverware. I could tell my mom was going over her list for Thanksgiving dinner in her head, and my dad was probably thinking about the football games he’d be watching the next day. Cadence was much quieter than usual, and I wanted to ask her to stay there with me that night, to watch a movie, but when she was done eating, she cleared her throat and said, “I’m heading over to Drew’s.”

            “Oh?” my mom had said, clearly not expecting that.

            “Yeah. She’s having us all over to watch movies. I might just sleep over at her house. I don’t want to come back in the middle of the night and wake everyone up.”

My sister wasn’t looking at either one of my parents. She was looking right over their heads, like she couldn’t meet their eyes. And I wanted to yell out, “Liar!” But instead I shoved a fork full of noodles and overcooked chicken in my mouth.

Dad looked at Mom and shrugged. “Okay, honey. Just be back plenty early in the morning.”

“I was hoping you could give me a hand in the kitchen.” My mom managed a small smile, but she didn’t protest. Now, I wonder if perhaps her intuition had kicked in, and she’d somehow sensed her oldest daughter was in danger, but like me, she’d chosen to ignore that voice in the back of her head.

“Sure. I’ll be back in plenty of time,” Cadence had said, a nervous smile on her face. She’d scooted her chair back, the legs screeching across the surface of the oak floor beneath our feet, and took her plate into the kitchen. I wanted to follow her, to confront her. I’d taken another bite of my dinner now tasting nothing.

The break in the silence started a conversation between my parents, and my mom started talking about the sales on Friday. She has friends who go Black Friday shopping, and while she’s not much of a fan herself because of the crowds, she seemed to be considering going this year.   

“May I be excused?” I asked, interrupting their conversation.

“Sure,” my mom had said, as if she wasn’t expecting me to be so polite. I’m not sure why I asked either—it’s not a rule at my house—but I was in the kitchen a few seconds later, practically running into Cadence as she came around the corner of the counter by the dishwasher.

“Oh, Cass. You scared me,” she’d said, clutching her chest.

I’d wanted to say if she scares that easily, perhaps she shouldn’t go out tonight, but I had just stood there, holding my half-eaten dinner. I remember noticing she wasn’t quite dressed like someone who was going to her friend’s house to watch movies. She was wearing knee-high brown boots, thick tights, and a skirt. I’d seen her bring down her brown jacket, which I assumed she’d toss over her brown cashmere sweater. I didn’t comment on the fact that sleeping in that outfit wouldn’t be very comfortable, and maybe she should consider taking an overnight bag. Instead, I just muttered, “Sorry,” and stepped around her to scrape off my plate.

“You got plans tonight?” she’d asked. My sister was always trying to figure out whether or not I had a secret boyfriend. I could see the twinkle in her eye as she hinted that this is what she was really asking.

“No,” I’d said, thinking now would be the perfect time to tell her I know more about her plans than I was letting on. Instead, I turned on the tap and rinsed my plate before sticking it into the dishwasher next to hers.

“Well, you should call one of your friends or something. You never have any fun, Cass.”

I was thinking at least I am not sneaking out behind mom and dad’s backs, but I just looked at her, wondering why we were so different. I would have never considered doing such a thing, and my sister was supposed to be a good girl, too, though I know this isn’t the first time she had lied to our parents.

I must’ve been staring too intently, because her forehead furrowed. “You okay, Cass? You feeling all right?”

“I’m fine,” I’d managed, trying to force a smile, but my face was frozen, and I am guessing it came across as a grimace.

She did not look convinced. “Okay. Well, I hope you find something fun to do.” She smiled at me and headed toward the kitchen door.

“Cadence!” I hadn’t meant for my voice to be so loud, but she’d stopped and turned to face me, still puzzled. I’d taken a few quick steps over to her and wrapped my arms around her. It took her a moment to hug me back, and at the time, she’d probably thought I’d lost all of my marbles. “Be careful,” I’d said into her shoulder.

A nervous giggle had escaped her lips. “I’m just going to Drew’s,” she’d reminded me.

Somehow, I’d managed to regain my composure and stepped back, releasing her. “Right.”

Cadence continued to look at me like she thought I might need to be professionally evaluated before she said, “Goodnight, Cassidy,” and backed out of the swinging door into the dining room.

“Goodnight.” Only she hadn’t heard me. She was gone by then. I could’ve ran after her, grabbed ahold of her, and not let go until she promised me she wouldn’t go to that stupid festival, but I didn’t do it. I stood in the kitchen, fighting back tears, wishing I’d been strong enough to speak up. While I was certainly unsettled, even then, I had no idea that was the last time I’d ever see my sister alive. She’d come back to the house later that night, but by then, I’m pretty sure the change had already started taking shape, and she was already undead.

Whatever the reason, I’d gone to bed early that night, thinking there was a shift on the horizon, something bigger than anything I’d ever known before. Eventually, I’d dozed off, but my suspicions that all was not well were confirmed when I awoke sometime between 4:00 and 5:00 AM to the sound of an unfamiliar voice coming from my sister’s room, an engine outside, and footsteps on the roof.

***

What did you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments or on my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/IDJohnsonAuthor/