Books
YA/Crossover Fantasy
Rum is a Rumpelstiltskin retelling written because I wondered why anyone would marry someone who threatened to kill them, and what the little man could possibly have wanted with a baby.
Amber and Willem is its linked sequel - set in the same world, but in a different country sometime later and with none of the same characters. The third in the series - yet to be written - will tie the two together.
Rum
Serena's father believes she can spin straw into gold - and she can, from a certain point of view. Serena isn't good for a hand's turn of work, but she can spin stories better than any you've ever heard - magical stories, though she doesn't know it. Serena's stories carry her away from her home to marry a king who turns out different from the one she imagined. When she gives her baby away to make good on a bargain, her husband throws her out and threatens to kill her if he ever sees her again.
​
So Serena is left to make amends - to travel the land with her shape-changing father and a bird who used to be a girl to find her baby and the strange little man who took him from her.
Amber and Willem
Amber and Willem are best friends and they are the only people in their village who can do magic. Willem speaks to birds and he longs to fly above all things, but when he visits the Great Eagles in the mountains, he learns that he never will - and he may never walk again either after his failed attempt. Amber only wants to be with the horses, who are people to her, since she knows their language. The problem is, none of the horses she loves belong to her, since she is only a goose girl. She makes up her mind to develop every scrap of power she has and seek fortune.
​
Willem can't imagine his life without Amber. He battles to stay with her, but when the dragons come he has to begin to think for himself and find his own power.