Wake of Echoes

Summer is the perfect time for catching up on all those wonderful books your friends keep raving about. Whether you're going to the beach, traveling abroad, visiting Grandma, or stuck babysitting your little brother, this collection of young adult dystopian novels will carry you away to darker worlds of the future, where young people fight to be heard ... and sometimes to save the world! Like any good collection, these twelve books are a mixture of new releases and classic favorites, but everyone of them is a MUST READ for true fans of the YA dystopian genre. Here they are, in no particular order: 1.  Stealing Liberty  by Jennifer Froelich When Reed Paine is sent to a secret detention school for teens whose parents are branded enemies of the state, he doesn’t expect to find friendship – especially after coming face to face with Riley Paca, a girl who has every reason to hate him.  But when Reed, Riley and a few others start reading the old books...

Do you ever feel like summer has just become... Get up and go,  Packed schedules, Overheated, Over expensive, Exhausting, Too much work, Sand in your eyes, not between your toes? My son just graduated from college and got his first full-time career job. One of the first things he said was, "Now summer is just another season for me." I don't like that! I want summer to be... Lazy days and lemonade, Straw hats and sandals, Hammocks and porch swings, Cloud watching, Trail hiking, Fresh air breathing, Adventure seeking! Nice fantasy, right? Especially if you're stuck working this summer, have no vacation money or vacation plans on the horizon and expect summer to just be the same as the rest of the year --- but hotter and with kids to deal with as well! The answer to our need for escape and our inability to escape is obvious: We need to spend our summer reading. Yes! Escape with me to the future, or the past. To Greece or Me...

I am so excited to share this news: A Place Between Breaths was awarded an Honorable Mention for genre fiction in Writer's Digest's most recent Self-Published Book competition. Nearly 5,500 books were entered in the competition and only ten books were honored for genre fiction (that combines romance, suspense, thrillers, sci fi, memoirs, mysteries, westerns, etc. -- in other words, a very competitive field). Each books was judged in six categories*, with a high score of five points. A Place Between Breaths was awarded a FIVE in every category! Here's what the judge who read it had to say (SPOILER WARNING: A minor spoiler from the prologue is in the second paragraph): I loved this story! It is a well-written, suspenseful, crime-investigation novel that also highlights the problems of border crossings, the Mexican drug cartels, dirty DEA officers and police officers as well as their truly courageous counterparts. In addition, I loved that you began with the vie...

available November 26 on Amazon.com Next week on Tuesday, November 26, my second novel, A Place Between Breaths , will be released -- hitting Amazon shelves first in Kindle* and paperback.  Soon after, it will be available at your local bookstore and library. I'm very excited to share this story with you all -- and a bit nervous too.  While there are some mystical elements in this story, it's not as dreamy as Dream of Me.  Explaining exactly how this story created itself in my noggin is pretty much a spoiler, so if you really want to know, see me after you've read it. Here's what the back of the book tells you: When FBI Agent Rachel Mueller flies to Mexico’s Copper Canyon to recover the body of a missing American college student, she's partnered with Mexican federal agent Marius Suarez, a man she knew and loved years ago when he used an alias and worked undercover for the DEA.  Working together while trying to sort out their troubled past, Rachel and Mari...

D id you see Jimmy Kimmel’s Book Club/Fight Club skit with Oprah Winfrey?  It aired after the Oscars on February 29.  It was funny, I’ll admit.  But when Jimmy said “reading is BORING,” I couldn’t help cringing. It feels like I hear this sentiment a lot, but it’s hard to quantify.  How many people read for pleasure anymore?  How many actually find it boring?  I tried to find some relevant statistics, but the results were highly suspect.  Some were incomplete, others were contradictory.  It depends on how the question is asked.  Some focused on books purchased, but not read -- or whether books were started, but not finished.  Some focused on how many people visit book stores.  Recent studies take in the growth of e-books and how that has influenced reading, but it’s too early for real analysis in that arena.   I’ve included some of these statistics at the bottom of this post, if you are truly interested.  But even if stat...

I have a dear, sweet* young friend named Hailey who loves books.  She loves old books and new ones.  She loves the smell of them, the crackle of spines, the sound of each page as it turns.  She loves the weight of a book in her hand and the way they look, lined up on shelves.  (*And please understand, I don’t mean “dear” or “sweet” in a condescending way.  She’s as dear to me as a niece and anyone who knows her can attest to her sweetness.) But Hailey’s love of paper books is a jealous love.  She is adamantly opposed to digital books and e-readers.  She goes so far as to smile at the thought of EMPs leading to a dystopic future where we are all sadly in possession of worthless gadgets, while she is still the proud owner of a prized library.  So when I decided to write about e-books, Hailey came to mind.  And if you’re thinking that conceding to her viewpoint before even beginning to express my own is a lousy way to arrange things, you’r...