Cassia Osborne just wants a calm, book-filled, un-awkward freshman year of high school — a desire doomed from the start, if nothing else because she’s tragically inept at everything other than academics. Her difficulties finding her way around the school (one of her classes doesn’t even seem to exist) strike her as just an overlarge helping of garden-variety Cassia disasters until the school counselors try to brainwash her instead of straightening out her schedule. Finally she must concede that the counselors are up to something and some of the strange people she copes with are gods in disguise — and that her seemingly magical ability to screw everything up really is magical.
Humor, both mundane and absurd, is key to my YA fantasy Dear Angus. As this bright but unimaginative teen’s world comes apart at the seams, I hope readers will get a taste of madness, unreality, and the sublime as they laugh with (and at) Cassia’s antics.
There may eventually be sequels from the perspective of Cassia’s friends chronicling how they all take reality apart and put it back together as happily and well as they can.
In the meantime, here a couple of peeks at Cassia’s self-image:
Dear Angus is a kick, and I hope these give you a sense of the chaos that is Cassia!
Of Elsewhere 