My new YA novel begins today!

I’m so excited to start sharing my new YA book today! It’s absolutely my “fight The Man” activism book, and it really gets my blood pumping with the need for change. But before I turn you loose in Chapter 1, I wanted to share the story behind why I’m publishing this book in an all-new format than you’ve seen from me before.

If you’ve been on my blog for more than 5 minutes, you know that I write fanfiction as well as original fiction books. One thing I’ve always loved about fanfiction is the community. There’s something magic about a place where status & success are taken out of the equation, and stories are offered freely, out of joy. Even the reviews are different- readers review to the author, to share their reactions about the work, instead of reviewing for other readers, grading what they did or didn’t like, while the author is just sitting somewhere sort of loftily removed, not included in that process.

I’ve always wanted to bring the fanfic spirit of generosity and open communication into my original fiction writing career, which is why I decided to take one of my original fiction books and offer it for free as an experiment.

This book is a YA (Young Adult) Contemporary, so it doesn’t fit with all my published adult romances. I could still put it out under a pen name, but it occurred to me that this book would be the perfect opportunity to see if I could take what I love about fanfic & make it work for my original fiction writing life.

I do strongly believe that authors—like all human beings—deserve to be paid for our work, but at this time my family is healthy & we can pay our rent, and I don’t ask for more than that. I wrote this book for the sheer joy of it and I want to share it in the same spirit. You can read this one and then pick up one of my other books, or not, I don’t mind. You can review or not, again, I don’t mind. The beauty of my fanfic community has always been that people share as they please without expectation and that’s what I want this experience to be.

I’ll be sharing new chapters about once a week, posted free online for anyone who wants to read. The link is here and also below. If you make a free user name and password on the site where it’s hosted, you can follow the story so it will email you when I upload a new chapter. That way, you won’t have to always be checking back and risk missing one adrenaline-fueled moment. If you’d like to leave a star and a comment when you visit, that really helps other people find the story. Also, if you get the Wattpad app, you can read on your phone or other devices, if you prefer not to read on a computer.

Serializing stories is a method older than Charles Dickens, but being able to publish your work instantaneously to tens of thousands of people around the world…well, that’s all new and I’m excited to be able to take part in this publishing revolution. Here’s what my next book is about:

NOT NOTHING: A Young Adult Contemporary novel

Star in TV’s hottest teen series or start a revolution…
Why not do both?

Brooklyn has a role on a blockbuster teen TV series, but she’s the overlooked sidekick who never gets the good lines. Cade is the brooding star all the girls swoon for, and of course it’s just when he starts to notice Brooklyn that democracy in America is falling apart. The real-life government is beginning to act way too much like the one in her dystopian TV show.

At first, all Brooklyn wants is a chance to explore her connection with Cade. But there’s little time for that when her government is tossing innocent people out into the streets to fund their greedy war. As protests boil into violence, the media smothers any reports of unrest, and Brooklyn discovers her voice has power. Soon, she’s shouting into a megaphone instead of typing into Twitter.

When corrupt officials start rewriting her TV show as propaganda, Brooklyn must choose. She can keep the dream life that’s finally at her fingertips, or she can risk it all on the slim chance that one girl can actually save a whole country.

Snatch up this YA Contemporary for an adrenaline-fueled peek at the power of story to change the world.

Happy reading, my dears. The first chapter is here.