Follow the Adventure
Melissa Bergum
About
Behind the Writer
Melissa is always looking for an adventure with the characters she creates and the worlds they live in. She almost always writes stories with elements of magic to one degree or another because magic is too fun not to have around! She primarily focuses on writing Middle Grade and a few Young Adult novels. Like one of Melissa's characters, Melissa is deaf in one ear!
Melissa was accepted into a mentorship program with WriteHive in December 2022 with Gina Gonzales and also was accepted into the 2023 Futurescapes Workshop!
Some of Melissa's major influences are pretty much anything written by Tamora Pierce, Studio Ghibli films, Avatar the Last Airbender, and a plethora of video games!
Middle-Grade Fantasy (Completed)
To honor her mum’s dying wish, a 10-year-old witch reluctantly heads to a magical academy with her familiar, a Flame Spark. When her familiar is spark-napped, she befriends a bumbling warlock and uncovers family secrets in her quest to avoid her greatest fear: being alone forever.
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If the magic and whimsy of HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE met the drive of finding one’s place in a classist magical world as in KELCIE MURPHY AND THE ACADEMY FOR THE UNBREAKABLE ARTS.
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Paranormal Middle-Grade (Completed)
A spooky story surrounding a hotel's horrible history. This story is SCRITCH SCRATCH meets THE CLACKITY and DUST & GRIM.
Middle-Grade Fantasy (Completed)
After the death of her beloved grandmother, a girl discovers her grandmother’s adventurous bedtime stories of a magical world are true. Wanting to follow in her grandmother’s steps, the girl sets out on her own adventure in that land.
Think THE WORLD BETWEEN BLINKS meets CASPER TOCK AND THE EVERDARK WINGS.
Middle-Grade Sci-Fi (Critiquing!)
Twins crash-land on an empty planet and find a lonely little android who’s looking for the meaning of family. Now they’ve got to find their parents, figure out how to get off the planet, and stop an android gone bad.
It’s WALL-E meets TITAN A.E.
Dark Fantasy Middle-Grade (Redrafted)
Two sisters. One who sees monsters and the other who doesn’t. One who fears them and and the other who refuses to believe monsters are real. One goes missing and the other’s responsible.
If STRANGER THINGS and NEVERMOOR met the sisterly bond of FROZEN, you’d have the girls’ story.
Middle-Grade Fantasy (Draft 0 Complete)
Accidentally turning into an animal one day changes a young girl's life forever. New school. New weird abilities. And it's not just the one animal she can turn into. She needs to learn how to master her abilities if she's ever going to find her new normal.
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If TURNING RED met INSIDE OUT in a boarding school.
Middle-Grade Fantasy (Draft 0 Complete!)
From a group project to a pesky crush to rescuing her town, Liliana's got her work cut out for her in this fantasical crush-com featuring a main character with single-sided deafness.
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Middle-Grade Fairy Tale (Early drafting)
One day a young girl wakes with a piece of her missing, her moonlight. To get it back she’ll have to travel through lands shrouded in shadows and lore and she’ll have to do it before it’s too late. She’s dying without the light.
Collaborative Young Adult Fantasy (In Progress)
This is a collaborative novel I am writing with the ever so lovely Belinda Grant. Everything gets interesting for our main characters when they are selected for a specialized camp for sprite users.
