Shameless self-promotion!

[Princess Kae-Leah]

I'd like to take this opportunity to advertise my FictionPress novella series, "Nerissa Sanderson, The Part-Time Mermaid of Sunshine Valley, CA"! It has already received more than 7,000 hits from 67 countries and mostly positive reviews, and of course any of you are welcome to check it out! It's a squeaky-clean, light series targeting tween and teen girls, and I'd like to clarify that my intention is NOT by any means to produce great literature, as one of my major influences is "Sweet Valley High", Nerissa's hometown is a pastiche of Sweet Valley and some of the characters names reference SVH characters, etc.. I have a lot of fun trying to capture the distinctive style of old-school, guilty-pleasure, YA fiction, with its overuse of "said bookisms" , endless description of people's physical appearances. Even though I try to never take this series too seriously, just the same I have developed a pretty in-depth fantasy world in it that has become pretty much how I think of merfolk.

Here's the link to my FP profile:
www.fictionpress.com/u/729633/Kae_Leah_W (http://www.fictionpress.com/u/729633/Kae_Leah_W)

[Princess Kae-Leah]

Summary of the series: Nerissa Sanderson is your average, insecure 15-year-old girl, living in sunny Southern California with her eccentric, single, marine biologist mother Melinda. Her world is turned upside down when her mom reveals that the father she always thought was dead is not only very much alive, he isn't even human! He's a merman, and not just any merman, but King of the quasi-utopian underwater kingdom Pacifica!

[Taylor is a Mermaid]

I'm still only in the first chapter, but I've started reading this and so far I really like it! It does remind me a lot of Sweet Valley High and some of the guilty pleasure Nancy Drew books I read that were written in the 80s/early 90s. There's something very nostalgic about this series.

[Princess Kae-Leah]

Thanks so much! That's the idea, it ain't highbrow literature, I want to capture the nostalgic "feel-good" flavor of those guilty pleasure books, and it sounds like for you I served that purpose well! It's a really fun style to write in, if anyone else here writes as a hobby and is looking for a fun, not-too-serious writing project, I recommend you to try and capture your inner Francine Pascal or Carolyn Keene!
Rissie's arch-nemesis at school, Teagan Wakefield, is inspired by one of my favorite SVH characters Lila Fowler(yeah, I know, she was a rich rhymes-with-witch, but she was one of the more interesting and well-developed characters in that series), and the setting is supposed to be the romanticized teenage world of those books, NOT gritty reality. I like to write pure escapism, which I think is what people really need sometimes. I could never write the kind of YA that's all about drugs and date rape, I'm too naive and optimistic for that. I think the SVH style is perfect for fantasy, because let's face it, even though there weren't mermaids or fairies in those books, they weren't by any means a very realistic depiction of teen life, and another inspiration for this series was when I was a teenager, I wasn't fond of my "boring life" and would've loved to found out I was someone special, such as a mermaid princess, so I wanted to explore what that would really be like for a 15-year-old girl.
The third novella in this series is a little more "high-fantasy" I suppose, as it takes place almost entirely on a magical island where nothing is what it seems, magic trumps science, blah, blah, blah!

[Princess Kae-Leah]

Taylor dahling, since I know you like to think of merfolk as fish-eating omnivores who are part of the ecosystem in which they live, what's your opinion of the way it works in the "RissieVerse", where in the Enchanted Zones the natural reality that humans see is an illusion? That's one of the more convoluted concepts in the series, but I hope I had the always long-winded Poseidon explain it well. ;) I like the irony that Melinda's a scientist even though she knows the truth about the magical world, must feel like a conflict of interest sometimes for her!
Fun facts:
*Vanessa is named the human woman Ursula disguises herself as in The Little Mermaid.
*The name "Nerissa" means "daughter of the sea".
*Melinda is inspired in part by my real-life mother, who isn't a scientist obsessed with the ocean, but me and her have a very close relationship, which I think Rissie and Melinda have.
*Nerissa's birthday is October 10. Ironically enough, she's a Libra, an air sign!