✨ A Little Jaiyah Symone Update ✨
Lately, I’ve been tapping into the world of Young Adult fiction, and honestly? I think I’ve found my lane.
There’s something about writing teenage characters—their complicated friendships, messy choices, first heartbreaks, family secrets, and desperate need to figure out where they belong—that has completely pulled me in. I’m able to blend mystery, fantasy, suspense, and real emotions in a way that feels natural and exciting again. Most importantly, I’m genuinely enjoying every part of the process.
My upcoming YA dark-academia fantasy, The Academy of Unfinished Girls, introduced me to this new side of myself as an author. Belladonna Academy, Zari, the Gifts, the secrets, and the girls who were never as “unfinished” as they were made to believe have become so special to me. I cannot wait for y’all to enter that world.
I’m also preparing A Waltz Before Dying, the first book in my Blackthorn Season series—a Regency-inspired romantic fantasy mystery filled with a melanated aristocracy, dangerous courtship, bloodline magic, betrayal, and murder. It isn’t YA, but it represents another part of the author I’m becoming: bolder, more imaginative, and completely unafraid to create worlds where we get to exist in every genre.
I’ll always appreciate the stories that introduced readers to Jaiyah Symone, but I can feel my writing evolving. I’m finding my voice, stretching beyond what I’ve written before, and discovering the kinds of stories that make me excited to sit down and create.
This next chapter of Jaiyah Symone is filled with mysterious academies, gifted girls, deadly secrets, beautiful Black worlds, and stories that refuse to fit inside one box.
And I truly believe I’m only getting started. 🖤✨
