Your Mission, Miss Gayle...

Time again for Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sunday!

Here's a little more from my YA paranormal thriller After Me. (You can catch up on the earlier excerpts here.) Last week Jada discovered that she won't be going on to The Great Beyond just yet because there's an administrative hold on her Afterlife Account. She has to serve time as a Transdead Trustee in order to clear her account, and here's what she has to do.

(Photo from iZombie, The CW)

I took the papers she handed me and scanned the one on top, then I looked at her as if she were crazy and said, “I have to track down predators until I find the one who killed me? Are you kidding me?”

“Another pointless question, Miss Gayle.”

I threw the papers down on the counter and said, “Okay, then here’s a question for you. Why do I have to go back as some kind of psycho zombie chick as punishment for what that sicko did? He’s the one who should have to pay for it, not me!”

“Oh, he will, make no mistake about that. Your job is to bring him to justice sooner than he expects, possibly putting others like him out of commission along the way.” She pointed to a yellow box of text at the bottom of my assignment page and said, “And you’re not being punished, you’re paying an early termination fee. As are all Transdead Trustees, you’re being sent back to complete what was left unfinished in your life.”

Next Sunday Jada finds out exactly why she's obligated to clear her account. Can't wait? You can buy After Me here. And please also check out the other Snippet Sunday folks and the Weekend Writing Warriors. Something for everyone among these talented writers!


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

See all my books at my Web site
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Stairway to WHERE?

Time again for Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sunday!

Last week you met Jada just as she was realizing she wouldn't live to see another sunrise. She decides that if she's going to die, she'd rather not hang around for all the jolly festivities the psycho has in mind. She says something sure to piss him off so she can bow out of the party early.

After a brief flash of pain when the butt of the gun smashed into my skull, I welcomed the darkness.

But my oblivion didn’t last long.

When I opened my eyes again, I was sitting on an upholstered chair in a room that almost looked like the guidance counselor’s office at Tallahassee Premier Academy where I was a senior. But here everything was painted such a bright white that it almost hurt my eyes, and the sign on the door to my left leading into the inner office was lettered in some kind of glowing gold paint.

When I got up to read the sign, I realized I was wearing some kind of weird white dress. Where had that come from? Had somebody found me and taken me to a hospital?

I knew that wasn’t the case when I read the sign on the door:

AFTERLIFE ADMISSIONS OFFICE.

“Oh, crap. I’m dead.”

Can't wait for more? You can buy After Me here. And please also check out the other Snippet Sunday folks and the Weekend Writing Warriors. Something for everyone among these talented writers!


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

See all my books at my Web site
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Dead Girls Do it Better

Time again for Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sunday!

I'm starting a new series of snippets this week from my YA paranormal thriller, After Me, the first book in my UNFINISHED series. (If you missed the last snippet from Shades of Blue, you can read it here.) I shared snippets from this one before when it was just a WIP and had a different title, so it's a lot different now. Here's a blurb to set it up.

After she’s murdered by a sexual predator, 18-year-old Jada Gayle must stay among the living until she finds and stops the Internet stalker who killed her. When the Afterlife Admissions Office assigns the now “transdead” Jada to a foster home back among the living, she assumes the identity of a homeless teen and is expected to simply fit in as she hunts down her killer, but that's not so easy when you’re a hot zombie chick channeling Chuck Norris. Then she meets Lew Stanton—captain of the chess team and computer whiz who makes her dead heart beat phantom rhythms in her chest. As if it’s not bad enough to have the hots for a nerd, Jada’s new friend Annalee likes him too. While Jada deals with all this unwanted teenaged angst, the man who murdered her is closing in on more foolish girls. Jada thinks she has plenty of time to handle her predicament until the night she gets a terrifying message: I HAVE YOUR FRIEND.

This scene is from the beginning of the book, right after Jada's killer gets into the Ferrari he lured her with.

“Drive!” he said and jammed the nose of a freakishly big pistol into my ribs. “Go to the intersection and make a U-turn. Keep going until you get back to where you picked up the car.”

If I’d still felt emotions like normal girls, I probably would’ve been scared shitless, but the best I could manage was irritation that he’d tricked me.

“Look, you don’t need the gun,” I said. “I’ll do whatever you say.”

“You sure as hell will.”

Even more than his words, the laugh that came from behind the bandana was the second thing that told me I wouldn’t live to see nineteen. Dang, I’d need my fake ID for all eternity. And it wasn’t even a good picture.

Get used to that snark—it's Jada's trademark. Can't wait for more? You can buy After Me here. And please also check out the other Snippet Sunday folks and the Weekend Writing Warriors. Something for everyone among these talented writers!


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

See all my books at my Web site
Follow me on Twitter
Like my Facebook Fan Page

Challenge Me, Will Ya?

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

FACT: I need to finish my work-in-progress, a YA paranormal novel titled PENANCE.

FACT: It has already taken me longer to write this book than it took me to write my first three.

FACT: All productivity on my part comes crashing to a halt whenever my husband is home.

FACT: My husband is a teacher.

FACT: School is out for the summer.

Consequently, I have decided to join author Theodora Goss in her YA Novel Challenge, a NaNoWriMo type event meant to inspire/boost/dare/taunt some of her fellow writers into writing or revising a YA novel, or part of one, between June 1 and August 31. Obviously, she understands flummoxed writers like me since she’s made the rules so flexible!

I have every intention of winning this challenge with a completed manuscript. I’ve even got a big head start since I’ve already written almost 40,000 words of it. However, if I don’t finish my book, at least this challenge will make me update my woefully outdated blog more often, so I shall be claiming success either way!

Time to get off now and write. My mantra for the next few months is “BICHOK now, BICHOK forever!”

At least until August 31.


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