Today, I’m closing up my calls for beta readers for the rough.5 version of my novel. I’m almost finished up with the edits and I’m expecting to send copies to beta readers on Saturday. Now, it’s time to announce Project Ouzel’s actual name: It’s Tiphareth Rising. The project name was inspired by the burn scar from the Ouzel Fire at Rocky Mountain National Park just outside of Estes Park, Colorado. The novel’s actual name comes from the sefira on the Tree of Life. Tiphareth represents balance, beauty, integration, spirituality, and miracles.
My thanks to all the eleven people from the ArtsNet group here in the Yukon who graciously volunteered their time to help beta read my novel. I also want to thank the two subject matter experts I recruited to help me with some of the specifics. That makes thirteen total readers of the rough.5 draft.
What’s Tiphareth Rising about, anyway?
Ricky Byrd is a fifteen-year-old trans girl just trying to survive her sophomore year in Boulder, Colorado. She’s balancing cheer practice, capoeira, a crush on her childhood best friend, and a father whose general demeanour is best described as menacing. But she has help. She has a group of friends who love and adore her. She’s also haunted by a woman who appeared in her dreams eight years prior. She’s a guide with terrible timing and worse humour, her tone weaving between fluent hierophant and joking about 90s movies. However, her guide has secrets and is haunted by a past she can’t fully share. Sometimes for Ricky’s own good. Sometimes for someone else’s.
Tiphareth Rising is a YA urban fantasy about embracing who you are in the face of a world that insists on you being someone you’re not. It’s a book about a teenager who embraces the occult, not to be edgy, but because it provides a spirituality that nourishes her soul. It’s about the bodies we train and the bodies we’re given. Ultimately, it’s about what it costs to stop flinching.
Structured on three of the Tibetan bardos, it asks whether a second chance at becoming is something that can be engineered, or whether it has to be earned the ordinary way: one practice, one conversation, one refused flinch at a time.
What’s in the name?
The Ouzel Fire and the cutout from that fire is part of the book’s scenery. As someone who lived in Colorado for twelve years before I moved to Canada, it’s in my blood. Often, when I was commuting to and from work and school, I would find myself staring at the Rocky Mountains. I remember when I first moved to Colorado and I got off the airport bus in Boulder just outside the University Memorial Centre. Seeing the Flatirons up close and personal, I remember thinking “if I can’t live in Calgary, this could be home too”. So, Project Ouzel is a fitting project name for the book. As for why I use project names… that’s for another post, but short answer is sometimes, I’m not that great at naming novels.
The sefira of Tiphareth represents what the book is about. It’s about balance in life. It’s about beauty, the beauty of pursuing your Will. The beauty in the people around you and in what we co-create. It’s about integration of your whole self. Namely, recognizing your whole self as it is and embracing all the parts of it. It’s about spirituality as it wrestles with toxic spirituality while finding meaning for yourself. And… to a certain extent, it’s about miracles too. The miracles we make for ourselves.
And as for “Rising”? Well, I think it’s about the ascent to those things. My main character goes through trials to find Tiphareth in her life. As a result, her life becomes full of beauty and balance and a spirituality that nourishes her.
So, what’s next?
After I close up Tiphareth Rising and send out the e-mails to all the beta readers containing their questionnaires and copies of the manuscript, I’m going to hit NaNoWriMo and hit it hard. I’m also going to honour the six week distance this time around. I’ve chosen three projects I’m going to work on, though I’ll announce them closer to NaNo. I will also admit that even though all three of them clearly came from the rescue mission from the depths of the backup folder, I think I only gave one of them a project code name.
Also, as for this novel? I’m hoping to get it out in 2027. I’m shooting for fall, personally. I still need to get Tiphareth Rising to first draft status when I take it off the shelf in December. And I am planning to get some development editing done. Also, I need to find an artist to make some amazing cover art.
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