My YA Work in Progress

I'm not sure of many of you were aware, but I've been working on a Young Adult fantasy novel with my sister for the past few months. Okay, well not necessarily—we've been planning for the past few months but we started the actual writing process last week and I am so excited about it.
       It's an idea we've had for the last few years. Since we were twelve, to be exact. My sister came up with a very vague idea that she thought would make a good story and four years later, what do you know? We're writing it! Though, to be blunt, it is so much better now than it was when we first began planning. I don't even know how to express the amount of poor story-telling our earlier plans possessed. We've wrote out the plans for this story so many times. There have been endless "first drafts" and we've given up on it for months at a time because it was just too awful. It was only last month when we decided to give it another go and come at it from a different angle. We scratched so many plot points and characters and replaced them with new twists and such that I feel are much stronger and will live a much better impression on the readers.
         And we've reached 18,000 words as of today! I'm really, really excited and anxious about it and I have got no idea how we're going to get it published because I haven't got the faintest idea of how to go about that, but I'm going to try not to think about that until later.
         Now, as we're still in an early phase of the process, I don't think I'll share too much about what the book is about. All that I can say is that it involves an epic quest, a bad boy love interest, and two completely different antagonists that won't stop until they get their hands on something that our main character possesses. I really do wish I could share more, but I think it's best if I save it for when we're closer to completing the final chapter. We've only completed a few chapters at this point and the first chapter is long because it's told in five perspectives—something that's necessary to tell the story efficiently, unfortunately. It was very difficult to get their voices to sound different yet still sound like they were coming from the same book.
         Sigh. I'm going off now to work on it now but I think I can leave you all with a little bit that we wrote a few days ago and that I like quite a bit. Let me know what you think, if that's possible. Thank you!

          I sigh as my eyes flicker upwards, resting on the sky. Stars hang lazily across the dark space, watchful. For a moment I wonder if they can see us. I mean, my father used to tell me stories about the stars. He said that when we die, our souls leave our bodies and float towards the sky, higher and higher until they wrap around the stars and sink in. I don't think I believed him then, but now I hope it's true. I hope he's not really gone, just waiting.
          "Kaida?" A voice says beside me, seeping into my ears and scattering my thoughts. The word is deep and right away I know who it is. A hand reaches out, tightening around my wrist. "Is that you?"
          I turn, peering through the darkness. Blue strips of light play across him for a moment and I make out the lines of his face, the soft slope of his jaw. His curled hair dances in all directions. A grin widens my mouth as I nudge my shoulder lightly against his.