Birth Announcement

"The End"

Really, are there two more beautiful words an author can write? For me, finishing a new manuscript is like welcoming a new child into my family.

Meet my bouncing baby girl named PENANCE.

After she’s murdered, seventeen-year-old Jada Gayle arrives in the Afterlife Admissions office and discovers that a hold has been placed on her account. Florence, Jada’s Afterlife Advisor, informs her that she must stay among the living until she finds and stops the man who murdered her—her penance for messing around online and getting herself killed by a sexual predator. After she’s matched up with a newly dead homeless teen on Deathbook.net, Jada assumes the girl’s identity and gets assigned to a nice foster home in Miami’s Coconut Grove.

While she’s one of the transdead, Jada is not supposed to feel any emotions, so imagine her surprise when she discovers that an addendum to her penance was inadvertently left out of her paperwork: she must also learn to deal with normal human emotions since she didn't have them while she was alive. Ever since her father and best friend were killed in a drunk driving accident, Jada hasn’t felt anything. Now she’s bombarded with intense emotions she wishes would just go away.

Or so she thinks until she meets Lew Stanton, captain of the chess team and computer whiz. And if it’s not bad enough to have the hots for a nerd, Jada’s new best friend Annalee secretly likes him too, so Jada is torn between loyalty to her friend and the guy who makes her dead heart beat phantom rhythms in her chest. While Jada deals with all this unwanted teenage angst, the man who killed her is closing in on more foolish girls. Can she focus enough to stop him before he kills again?

My baby girl really kicks butt, huh? Even for a newborn!

Now begins the process of introducing her to an agent and/or publisher!



~Stay true to yourself and your dreams will come true.