Elevator pitch

“It’s The Breakfast Club meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

Plot

Sleepy town in semi-rural America. Small public high school, too small for any actual cliques to form. Some kids are more popular than others. Every one of them is an individual with goals, hobbies, and a detailed personal life, though they are not, on the whole, especially introspective or knowledge-seeking.

In addition, each member of the senior class spends much of their time fighting the forces of darkness.

• A shy boy with controlling parents is also a sorcerer who deals with eldritch monstrosities whenever they rise from the town’s lake in the dead of night.
• One of the school’s three cheerleaders woke up one day with impeccable hand-to-hand combat skills, which is good, because that was the same day the ninjas started showing up.
• An aloof contender for the state tennis championship duels featureless, humanoid ghouls armed with a steak knife and a can of pepper spray.

And seventeen other stories, besides.

None of these characters has any inkling of the others’ struggles; teenagers are very good at hiding their secret lives from others. But one day, all the hidden stories intersect, and the senior class will have to band together if they want to save their town…

…and the world? No, probably not the world. The world is a big place, with millions of hidden stories. But one town is enough.

This might be a metaphor for the fact that everyone has a unique set of problems and we shouldn’t judge from outward appearances, but it’s mostly a way for me to deal with real high school social dynamics (few books do this well) and also write lots of supernatural fight scenes.