Unpublished YA Fantasy Novel Manuscript

Howl’s Moving Castle x Queer Ocean’s Eleven

Magic blends with mudlarking in The River Thieves. In an alternative London, the Thames is polluted by magic and hidden behind iron barriers. A selectively-mute young thief is hired for an impossible heist. He must recruit a team of misfits and break into a fortress on the abandoned southbank, to find a lost book containing the secret to fixing the rot in the river. To do so, he’ll have to face what he’s been running from for seventeen years. The forbidden pull of the Thames and what lies beneath its surface.

Character artwork of Sam and Benjamin by Jane Pica, 2025.

Top 50 - Cheshire Novel Prize 2026

Longlisted - Goldfinch Novel Award 2026

Short Horror Fiction

Climate rage meets seaside gothic in this sub-1500 word short story featuring a rotting coastline and an ancient, hungry sea-being. For fans of They Bloom at Night and Scorpion Deep.

Middle-Grade Historical Fantasy WIP

Twelve-year-old Milo Mallowcreek and his five brothers and sisters are tasked with a job by the wealthy canal-owners who control their city. Milo and his family must track down a way to stop the supernatural creatures that terrorise the canals every winter. Milo must solve the mystery before the creatures wake up, or before the canal-owners run out of patience.

This middle-grade historical fantasy for readers aged 9-12 has a cast of disabled and neurodivergent characters and themes of social injustice and questioning the stories told to us by those in authority. For fans of The Sea Beast and The Dark Times of Nimble Nottingham.