PROJECTS
IF DEATH BE MY ART
THE OTHER VALLEY X PIRANESI
PITCH
Yuna Vilsfer’s adoptive older sister has unknowingly paved the path for Yuna’s pending disappearance by being a terrific example. One, tolerate the most wounding, blood-sucking individual available, and believe it is love. Two, reject every source of actual love. Three, stay beautiful while the mind rots, and the world will never sense any absence.
The most wounding person Yuna knows ahead of her eighteenth birthday is a murderer she escaped last decade, before she too could be turned into one—her fanatic birth mother and ex-artist, Sayana, whose existence she has wisely concealed from her adoptive family behind well-researched lies. Her adoptive parents’ affection is an error all-too-beautiful to let slip from her fingers.
But when Sayana’s handwritten notes fall at Yuna’s doorstep, her frail sense of home dissipates. The woman brings up poor, lonely Yuna’s secret fictional friend to reveal she’s been watching. Had Yuna not escaped as a child, she would’ve mastered the art of killing targets while erasing their loved ones’ grief, then turning them into oil paintings. Now, Sayana threatens to perform this art on Yuna’s family, have her watch, learn, and perform it on herself.
Frantic for any way to protect her home while keeping her past buried, Yuna teams up with a young man—a lookalike of her fictional friend—stalked by the same handwriting, when a new note gives them seven days to die.
As her desperation against the ticking clock leads her down a dark path, she must resist the increasing pull to surpass her sister in disappearing, because if she fails, the only people she loves are murdered with no one left to mourn them.
Whimsical
Terrifying
Twisty
Melancholic
Literary voice
Dark fairy-tale
Uneasy
Budding friendship
Warm
Absurd
Philosophical
Complicated siblings
Dark
Connection
Dreamlike
Unflinching
YA Crossover
Belonging
Humourous
Identity
Grief-ridden
Loneliness
Emotional suspense
Memory-driven
Sarcastic
Psychological mystery
Found Family
Surreal
Curious protagonist
