Naomi Hughes Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Naomi Hughes
Author Naomi Hughes grew up all over the United States, before she finally settled in the Midwest, a place that she loves a lot, despite it trying to kill her every spring with tornadoes.

She has a bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication, something that involved taking some writing-for-media. It was mainly for journalism.

Naomi has been writing in different formats her whole life (things like journalism, short stories, poetry, etc). She even wrote some for-fun books while in junior high and high school, and wrote a serious manuscript before she wrote a novel called “The Shadowed Flame”. She began writing books with the intent of getting published about six months before finding representation.

While writing “The Shadowed Flame”, she followed a schedule. As she wrote the first draft, she was still in her honeymoon phase of writing, meaning she wrote and revised during any and all free time that she had (which averaged about four to six hours a day). As she was rewriting, she paced herself much more and wrote about a chapter each day, about 2,500 words per day.

As she wrote her first draft, she revised while she was writing it. Once she was finished with the whole draft, she spent two months working on editing it. Then she scrapped everything that she had and started it off with a complete rewrite, and just had to do some minor revisions.

She began querying this novel right when she finished her first draft. In all, she queried it for three months, but quit querying the month she did her rewrite. She had only one other manuscript, which was her first attempt at publication, that she queried before, and had that one out for about three months before realizing just how bad it was. She sent off about forty query letters for the novel.

Her novel “Afterimage” has been through a lot of evolution that it is tough to keep track where it began. She first got the tiny seed of the idea that snowballed into this story, she was watching Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos. Naomi’s previous books were all fantasy, but as she watched Cosmos she couldn’t help but get the urge to begin a new sci-fi project, something that involved a new branch of physics, perhaps. The very next day she got a notebook and began her brainstorming.

While writing, Naomi has to have a notebook, a glass of water, and sticky notes to write down important thoughts before she forgets them (which can be pretty quick). Most importantly, she needs to have silence. She has never been able to work if there is music going or something loud happening somewhere else in the house.

She writes quirky young adult fiction, that usually involves unicorns and/or physics. Her debut novel, called “Afterimage”, was released in the year 2018.

When she is not writing, her hobbies include traveling, reading, and geeking out over specific time-traveling Doctors and Marvel superheroes.

Her favorite bird is the hummingbird. She finds them to be adorable yet so incredibly hardworking. Naomi has a flowering bush right outside of her office window, and when she gets stuck plotting or writing she looks outside. During the summer as the bush blooms, she gets to watch all different kinds of hummingbirds snacking there.

“Afterimage” was chosen for a 2018 Fall/Winter YA Buzz Book by Publishers Marketplace.

“Afterimage” is the first stand alone novel and was released in the year 2018. A horrible explosion levels a part of the city, and leaves Camryn Kingfisher behind as the sole survivor.

Amid controversy, threats from government officials, and conspiracy theories, Camryn longs to get the truth. The only person she is able to turn to is some transparent boy named Quint who wears a lab coat. Unsure where he is a ghost or just a hallucination, Camryn has got no choice at all but to trust Quint while they get embroiled in a plot that is larger than either realizes.

This has become a race where the very fabric of space and time is at stake. They have to figure out just who caused the explosion before the culprit returns to finish off Camryn, along with her city, for good.

Readers were hooked on this book right from the very first page, and wound up reading it as quickly as they could. Fans found themselves on a journey of truth and discovery right along with the main character, and enjoyed the whole ride.

“Refraction” is the second stand alone novel and was released in the year 2019. Marty Callahan can still remember the earth before all the fog, and before every mirror turned lethal.

It all changed a year ago when the alien ship got destroyed right over Earth. Nobody knows why the shattered ship left the world covered in fog, or how mirrors became portals for some rather vicious monsters. All Marty knows for sure is that his tiny coastal town is one of the last few remaining safe havens. Despite the fact that all reflective surfaces have become illegal in order to protect what is left of the population, mirrors still have some unique uses and their demand remains on the rise.

Taking the opportunity, Marty starts distributing in an illegal mirror trade before getting caught by the son of the mayor, whose slate is not at all clean. The punishment for both their crimes is exile and they are both sent to one of the many abandoned and dangerous cities that has become overrun by fog.

These nightmarish streets hold a mystery that is much greater than either one of them could have imagined. Together, the pair find the terrifying truth behind what actually happened once the spaceship was destroyed, and what they will have to do to save Earth from the total annihilation nobody knows will be coming.

The characters are likable, and the plot is breakneck quick, making for another great page turner of a read fans couldn’t read quickly enough. The author does a great job of writing the action sequences in the novel.