Nick Gardner is having a rough year. His brother’s a jerk, his big fat dad has hit the road, and his sort-of best friend is dying. When a feverish hallucination puts Nick on a collision course with a water tower, a television news crew, and one Jaycee Amato, a girl with Siberian Husky eyes, his whole life begins to change. Together, they  set out on a secret journey to keep a promise to their dying friend. Will they accomplish what they set out for, or merely discover the beauty of Steinbeck, the crappy truth about plans and a few small facts about gravity? The Pull of Gravity is a coming-of-age story about first love, friendship, and the true nature of family.

This is the story of 13-year-old Charlie Joe Jackson, 7th grader, baseball player, B+ student, and all around normal guy. Charlie Joe is also a book-hater. Reading is a drag, and with just a little effort, he has managed to outwit the school’s plan of having him plow through book after book. Charlie Joe has had an on-going deal with one his friends in which just a few extra high-value snacks have been exchanged for a full reader’s report on the school-assigned book.  It’s a system that has worked for him for years. But 7th grade is different than the past and suddenly Charlie Joe’s scheme backfires on him with far-reaching and hilarious consequences. It would have been easier to just read the book in the first place.

RIVAL by Sara Bennett Wealer

• Publication Season/Year: Winter, 2011
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release Date:  Feb 15, 2011
• ISBN (hardcover): 9780061827624
• ISBN (paperback): 9780061827631

SUMMARY:

The stage is set for a high-stakes duet between Brooke and Kathryn, two high school seniors preparing for the prestigious Blackmore singing competition. Brooke and Kathryn work toward the Blackmore with eyes not just on first prize but on one another, each still stinging from a past that started with friendship and ended in betrayal. With competition day nearing, Brooke dreams of escaping the in-crowd for life as a professional singer, but her scheming BFF Chloe has other plans. And when Kathryn, an overachieving outcast with an underachieving college savings account, gets an unlikely invitation to Homecoming, she suspects Brooke of trying to sabotage her with one last public humiliation.

As pressures mount, Brooke starts to sense that the person she hates most might just be the best friend she ever had. But Kathryn has a decision to make. Can she forgive, or are some rivalries for life?

Jack – a lonely and strangely forgettable boy – isn’t happy about spending a summer in Hazelwood, Iowa with his crazy aunt and uncle. But his summer takes a decidedly strange turn when three astonishing things happen: Firstly, he makes friends – not imaginary friends like at home, but actual friends. Secondly, a bully beats him up – the bullies at home, like everyone else, never notice that Jack was in the room – their eyes just slick right past him. Thirdly, the richest man in town began to plot Jack’s imminent, and hopefully painful, death. As Jack investigates the mysteries of Hazelwood, its ancient magic thrown perilously out of balance, he discovers that the lives of his new friends – indeed, their very souls – are in terrible danger.  It’s up to Jack to put things right again no matter what it takes, or everyone he cares about will suffer the consequences forever.

ISLAND STING by Bonnie J. Doerr

• Publication Season/Year: Spring 2010
• Publisher: Leap Books
• Release Date: January 6, 2010
• ISBN (hardcover): TBD
• ISBN (paperback): 978-1-61603-002-5

Island Sting is a contemporary eco-mystery set in the Florida Keys. Though it is fiction, details about the natural environment and endangered species are authentic. It’s a tale of intrepid teens who change the effects of disappointment and heartache by taking positive action.

Kenzie Ryan has been forced to move from New York City to Nana’s cottage on an island in the Florida Keys. Talk about culture shock! She’s been torn away from her circle of lifetime friends at St. Joseph’s Academy for girls, her swim and softball teams, and her rapid-fire city life.

On her first day in the Keys, Kenzie rescues a drowning animal with the help of Angelo, a young Cuban-American local, whose rock-star face and savvy attitude are as exotic to Kenzie as her new environment. She learns the animal is an tiny endangered  Key deer that was chased into the canal by a poacher’s hound. But there’s more trouble on the island than the senseless slaughter of an endangered species: trap thefts threaten fishermen’s livelihoods; boaters destroy sea grass habitats; discarded garbage on land and sea kills wildlife. And Kenzie thought this place would be dull…

Kenzie and Angelo make a pact to expose the vicious deer killer and clean up the environment. They recruit a team, organize Keys Teens Care, plan an environmental cleanup crusade, and wage a dangerous undercover operation to solve the Key-deer-killer mystery. Though they work with a team to tackle their mission, each silently deals with traumatic loss. Throughout the investigation, Angelo and Kenzie experience a confusing magnetic attraction while struggling with cultural differences. But bit by bit they learn how much they have in common, and as Angelo and Kenzie work to protect the fragile tropical environment and its wildlife, both begin the slow process of healing.

Book Trailer

THE BOY WHO HOWLED by Timothy Power

• Publication Season/Year: Fall, 2010
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Children’s Books
• Release Date: October 26, 2010
• ISBN (hardcover): 978-1599905099
• ISBN (paperback): TBD

As far back as Callum can really remember, he’s been living in the Wild as the furless mascot of a wolf pack. But when his pack sends him back to live with his own kind—humans—fitting in is quite a challenge. He doesn’t remember English very well, so he accidentally says his name is “Clam.” He’s spent most of his life eating fresh-killed elk, so dining with vegetarians is tricky. And when he tries to impress the Alpha student in the school cafeteria by stealing food, people seem offended!

A BLUE SO DARK by Holly Schindler

• Publisher: Flux
• Release Date: May 1, 2010
• ISBN (hardcover): TBD
• ISBN (paperback): ISBN-10: 0738719269 ISBN-13: 978-0738719269

As A BLUE SO DARK opens, Aura Ambrose struggles to hide a secret.  Her mother, a talented artist and art teacher, is slowly being consumed by schizophrenia, and Aura has been her sole caretaker ever since Aura’s dad left hem.  Convinced that “creative” equals crazy, Aura shuns her own artistic talent.  But as her mother sinks deeper into the darkness of mental illness, the hunger for a creative outlet draws Aura toward the depths of her imagination.  Just as desperation threatens to swallow her whole, Aura discovers that art, love, and family are profoundly linked—and together may offer an escape from her fears.

Author Visit Information

I’d prefer to keep personal appearances to the Southwest Missouri area, at least to begin with.  I had an amazing year in 2009—in addition to A Blue So Dark, I sold two more novels, both scheduled to be released in 2011.  I’m also in the midst of finding a home for another finished project (a middle-grade novel), and am revising and preparing two young adult novels for submission.

In short, I do feel my number one priority right now is to my writing.  But I’d be happy to consider something a little closer to home—or an email interview!  I encourage anyone interested to get in touch!

Robbie is convinced his life is over. He is sent to Great Oaks, a school for troubled youth that is run like a prison. To get home, he must follow the rules, face the past, and tell the truth. Otherwise, Great Oaks School will really be the end of the line.

EXIT STRATEGY by Ryan Potter

• Publication Season/Year: Spring/2010
• Publisher: Flux
• Release Date: March 1, 2010
• ISBN (hardcover): TBD
• ISBN (paperback): 978-0738715735

EXIT STRATEGY tells the story of seventeen-year-old Zach Ramsey. Looming above Zach’s hometown are the smokestacks of the truck assembly plant, the greasy lifeblood of his Detroit suburb. Surrounded by drunks, broken marriages, and factory rats living in fear of the pink slip, Zach is getting out of Blaine after graduation. But first, he’s going to enjoy the summer before his senior year.

And Zach’s having a blast until he uncovers dark secrets that shake his faith in everyone, including his best friend Tank (a state wrestling champion), whose ‘roid rages betray a shocking habit. Falling in love with Tank’s twin sister Sarah, an Ivy League-bound scholar, doesn’t exactly make Zach’s life any easier. Eventually, with enough evidence to nail the town’s steroid kingpin, Zach is faced with the toughest decision of his life—one that will prove just what kind of adult he’s destined to be.

SOMETHING LIKE HOPE by Shawn Goodman

• Publication Season/Year: December 2010
• Publisher: Delacorte Press
• Release Date: December 28, 2010
• ISBN (hardcover): 978-0-385-73939-9
• ISBN (paperback): TBD

Shavonne is a fierce and desperate seventeen year-old who finds herself in a large juvenile lockup hundreds of miles from home.  She wants to turn her life around before her eighteenth birthday, but her problems seem too big, and time is running out. Amidst corrupt guards, out-of-control girls, and shadows from her past, Shavonne must find the courage to fight for a redemption she’s not sure she deserves.

STAR IN THE MIDDLE by Carol Larese Millward

• Publication Season/Year: Fall 2009
• Publisher: WestSide Books
• Release Date: October 26, 2009
• ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-934813-13-3 (School ISBN: 978-1-934813-29-4)
• ISBN (paperback): TBD

At sixteen, Star Peters is determined to keep her baby, but it is becoming increasingly more difficult each day. Instead of training for her high school’s cross-country team and preparing for her junior year, she is struggling to meet her baby’s needs, while trying to cope with painful, haunting secrets that she’s shared with no one. Wilson Fletcher, the baby’s father, someone Star had loved and trusted, won’t even acknowledge that the baby is his. To make things even more complicated, Star’s grandmother, concerned with her granddaughter’s struggles as a teen mother, is threatening to put Star in foster care and find adoptive parents for the baby. Star finds support from friends, especially Todd Ryan, a teen father caring for his infant daughter—and at a center she attends for teen parents. Wilson, at seventeen, is smart, athletic and popular. He just wants to get on with life, but he’s finding it difficult to forget about Star. As family and friends encourage Wil to accept his responsibility as a father, he begins to understand some important truths about the girl he can’t forget, himself, and what he believes to be true. In alternating chapters, Star and Wil voice their most intimate secrets, feelings, hopes and fears about themselves and their baby.

OF ALL THE STUPID THINGS by Alexandra Diaz

• Publication Season/Year: Spring 2010
• Publisher: Egmont USA
• Release Date: December 22, 2009
• ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-60684-034-4
• ISBN (paperback): TBD

When a rumor starts circulating that Tara’s boyfriend has been with one of the guy cheerleaders, the innuendo doesn’t just hurt Tara. It marks the beginning of the end for three lifelong friends.

Tara’s training for a marathon, but also running from her fear of abandonment from her father.

Whitney Blaire seems to have everything, but an empty mansion and absentee parents leave her looking for her own value in the wrong places.

And Pinkie has a compulsive need to mother everyone to make up for the mama she’s never stopped missing.

Then the new girl arrives in school and Tara starts to feel things she’s never felt for before for a girl. Can the girls’ friendship survive when all the rules have changed?

SEEDS OF CHANGE by Jen Cullerton Johnson

• Publication Season/Year: Spring 2010
• Publisher: Lee & Low Books
• Release Date:  05-31-2010
• ISBN (hardcover): 160060367X,  9781600603679
• ISBN (paperback):                                

SEEDS OF CHANGE is  picture book biography of scientist Wangari Maathai, the first African womanand first environmentalist to win a Nobel Peace Prize (in 2004), for her work planting trees in her native Kenya.

TIME FOR BED, BABY TED by Debra Sartell

• Publication Season/Year: Spring 2010
• Publisher: Holiday House
• Release Date: February 15, 2010
• ISBN (hardcover): 9780823419685
• ISBN (paperback): TBD                         

TIME FOR BED, BABY TED is a sweet bedtime story done in rhyme.  With vibrant, lively illustrations by Kay Chorao.

It’s time for bed, but where is baby Ted?  He’s not baby Ted!  Try and guess what he is instead.  With a quack, a snack, a cluck and a tuck, a loving father prepares his child for bedtime in this charming story.

JUST ADD MAGIC By Cindy Callaghan

• Publication Season/Year: Fall 2010
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster’s Aladdin M!x
• Release Date: Fall, 2010
• ISBN (hardcover): TBD
• ISBN (paperback): TBD