Ring photo © Dmitry Bairachnyi

The cover pretty much says it all. I’ll admit, when Tom pulled out a ring to give to Katie, I was taken aback. I think I may have been more floored by it than Katie. Tom is one of my quieter characters, and he had recently opened up to Katie, and then came to me and told me he wanted to give her a ring. At first I thought he meant his class ring, and while I think it is a little soon in their relationship, I could shrug off the class ring. But then he showed me the ring ….

Not a class ring, and more than a friendship ring, the Irish Claddagh ring has a rich history and significance to it. All of which screamed “too soon” to me—Katie was too young, they both were, for something carrying that much significance. I briefly thought about telling Tom he couldn’t give Katie the ring—he’d actually listen to me—but I changed my mind. It would have been wrong for me to stop him from sharing his feelings with Katie. In his mind, the ring and its symbolism is perfect for them. More than friends, neither one wanting to say love yet, it was his way of saying she meant a lot to him and he was faithful to her.

Teaser: A more-than-friendship ring causes Katie to gush out her feelings—to her diary, since she can’t tell anyone else.

Diary of a Misfit is available now for Kindle. A portion of the proceeds from Diary of a Misfit will go to the Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth.

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Newspaper photo © Oleg Pidodnya

When I decided to put Diary of a Misfit together, I earmarked the article on Amanda Cummings for inclusion to the collection. It initially caught my attention because the family believed repetitive bullying had been responsible for her decision to kill herself. I was deep in the middle of edits for a Middle Grade novel at the time, so I saved the link and moved on. In June, I had finished the edits, written the beginning of another novel on spec, and had changed my focus to One Way Ticket Home, which will be the next book in the Misfit McCabe series, when I hit a road block with the book. I knew I needed to let it simmer, so pulled up Diary of a Misfit and began working on the stories for it.

I had started working on Current Event when Tina Hoggatt contacted me about being involved in the Story Chairs project. The want to participate in the project was strong, but I am NOT a short story writer, which is what I told Tina initially, but then I realized I was actually working on a short collection of shorts, so I asked her to let me think about it. Then I asked for the maximum word count for the story and her answer of 500 words shook me. I gulped, and told her I’d give it a try, my brain screaming, “Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!” the whole time. But I did it … sorta.

My draft to Tina for the Story Chairs came in at 605 words, but I sent it off telling her I’d come in a little over maximum, and to let me know if it was a problem and I’d see how I could trim it. She loved it as it was and said she’d let me know once they got it recorded. Then came October and the news that they were having a problem with the story length and trying to get it into the chair, could I please trim it down. I asked how far, thinking the answer would be the original 500 limit and wondering whether I could cut that deep. The answer removed my ability to breathe … 300 words at the most. I had to cut the story by 50%—a task I thought impossible.

But my brain piped up with “are you a writer or a mouse?” and since I don’t have a long stringy tail, I decided as a writer, I’d have to view this as a challenge to prove my abilities. I opened the document and trimmed here, cut chunks there, and at the end had a story, which still made sense, and it came in at 300 words on the nose. I felt like running a victory lap around the house after that—which probably would have scared the dogs, so I contented myself with a few fist pumps.

Current Event in Diary of a Misfit is the full-length story of the Story Chairs version. Then a crime fiction author friend, Peg Brantley, asked whether I would like to participate in a fund raising auction for the Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth and when I realized the Shaka Foundation has a special emphasis on teen suicide prevention, I knew I needed to do more. Current Event is the reason I am donating a portion of the proceeds to the Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth, we lose too many young people too soon. Anything we can do to break the cycle is worth it.

Teaser: A homework assignment cuts a little close to home and Katie McCabe sees the dark underside of online activity for the first time.

Diary of a Misfit is available now for Kindle. A portion of the proceeds from Diary of a Misfit will go to the Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth.

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Rose photo © Artem Sapegin

When I ran across the photo of the rose, I knew immediately it summed up everything I needed for the piece named, Daddy’s Death. The bud, wilted and drooping, yet the stalk still straight and the leaves green. When we lose a loved one, it is how we feel; as if our essence has been sapped, we’re wilted, our life is crumpling around the edges, and yet, there is still life, and it flows around us. It was so perfect to me, I almost left the title and name off the cover—there was no need for anything else.

Some writers draft with a basic destination in mind, and at every turn ask the question, “what’s the worst thing I can do to my characters now?” and build it into the story. From before I wrote the very first word of Misfit McCabe, I knew Katie would lose her father to cancer. For me, it was the central reason why the book had to be written. What happens when a teen girl loses everything she holds dear—her father, her home, her best friend? And how does she cope when sent to live with strangers?

While I have always maintained, and still do, Katie is not modeled after the teen me, there are certain traits or experiences we share. And I’ll admit it was easier for me to connect with her emotional state and understand what she was going through with the loss of her father because of experiences I’d had around her age. At twelve and again at thirteen, I nearly lost my father to cancer. At that time, the surgery he had was experimental and the survival rate wasn’t good. But the chance of survival would have been 0% without it. I wish I could share those moments with you—what it felt to hear the news, whether it was a tearful good-bye when he went off to the hospital (probably not, knowing me because I wouldn’t show what I thought to be weakness), what the waiting felt like—but I can’t. I don’t remember—and not because it was so many years ago, I wasn’t able to remember even a few years later. I do remember how shocked I felt when my mom told me he had been in the hospital on two separate occasions. It had all melded into one in my mind.

When someone experiences the possibility a loved one may die, as was the case with my family, they go through the stages of grief, even though the person survives. My way of dealing with the difficult situation was to bury it—AND DEEP! Whether I will one day remember those moments or be able to sort out the different visits to the hospital instead of lumping them all into one, or whether they will forever remain buried somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I believe the experience is what allows me to connect so closely to Katie and her feelings and maybe why she chose me to tell her story to.

With this excerpt from Katie’s diary, I kept the notes before the story and the teaser short. She needed the opportunity to get what she needed to say out of her system, and nothing much more needed to be said… kind of like the rose on the cover. Teaser: The loss of a loved one is never easy.

Diary of a Misfit is available now for Kindle. A portion of the proceeds from Diary of a Misfit will go to the Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth.

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Cassie photo © Olga Ekaterincheva
School photo © Metalrose

When Cassie Kendall was first mentioned in a conversation between Tom and Katie during Nowhere Feels Like Home, I knew she was annoying and shallow … I didn’t know she was in the running for the Regina George award for meanness. I certainly didn’t expect Katie and Cassie to be friends—because Katie had managed in one day what Cassie never could—capture the attention and affection of Tom Pike.

Cassie is lacking moral responsibility; she’s never been made accountable for her actions. So if someone does her a wrong—real or imagined—she feels it is necessary to decimate the person in return. She will get her way, or someone is going to pay. But as far as Tom is concerned, she’d do better to take a tip from Katie, and put away the feminine wiles and practice on her right hook.

Mean Girl gave me an opportunity to show just how much of a bully Cassie can be, for so little cause. And she’s devious and manipulative—does Katie stand a chance?

Bullying is rampant and the internet has given a wider scope and range to it. The problem we as a community face, is not only against the acts themselves, but against the thought process which I have seen in many comments on incident articles they (meaning the victim of the attack) need to get a thicker skin. Or I survived bullying when I was a kid…. So because it was done to you, it’s okay to continue? Or the victim needs to get tougher, while the bully needs to keep making people tougher? Or how about the thought that the victim just needs to learn to stick up for themselves? Lawrence King is dead because he stood up to a bully. A victim is a person who suffers from a destructive or injurious action and nobody wants to be the victim. We need to learn to have compassion for our fellow human beings and accept them for who they are and until such time as that occurs, we will have a problem with bullies.

Teaser: Katie is conflicted when someone who bullied her is now the victim.

Diary of a Misfit is available now for Kindle. A portion of the proceeds from Diary of a Misfit will go to the Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth.

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Rusty photo © Wrangel
Background photo © David Coleman

I’ll admit it … when reviewing the stories I was planning for Diary of a Misfit I realized I needed a few lighter stories to balance out some of the heavier topics included in the collection and the first thing that popped into my head was an entry about Rusty. *Sigh* Rusty is the sort of character writers fall in love with. He waltzed into the story during Nowhere Feels Like Home, unexpected, larger-than-life, flawed, and irresistible. And not only irresistible to me, but to Sarah and Katie as well. And since these are excerpts out of Katie’s diary, I knew she wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to write about the most romantic thing she’d ever seen in her life (followed of course by lots of exclamation marks)

Before Rusty had revealed himself to me, I had been getting snippets of what looked like a near rape scene involving Sarah. I knew what I was getting was something out of Sarah’s past, when she was Katie’s age, and it bothered me on a couple levels. The first level was that I had never gotten the sense from Sarah that she had been through that type of experience, and I felt like I should have known before. And the second level was that while I may write a rape scene at some point in my writing career, I really didn’t want it to happen in this series. But as a writer, I follow the path I’ve been shown, so I tucked the scene away and forged ahead, happy not to be at that point in the story, because I knew it’d be a difficult scene to write.

Then Rusty showed up and I knew he was the guy in the scene, but I couldn’t believe it. While he definitely had a dangerous side to him, his feelings about Sarah were pure. Well, as pure as a teenage boy’s can be. As we got closer to where I knew that scene fit, I became more concerned because I really liked Rusty, and it would make the scene even more difficult to write. Until I finally had a clear vision of what actually happened. The way I had seen the scene before was through Matt and Mark’s eyes, and what they saw looked a lot worse than what had happened.

Teaser: A ghost from the past makes an appearance as a marine recruiter, and Sarah and Katie are swept away.

Diary of a Misfit is available now for Kindle. A portion of the proceeds from Diary of a Misfit will go to the Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth.

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Crosses photo © Chrisharvey
Background Dreamstime Stock Photo 26793

The mind of a writer is a strange thing. Or maybe I should qualify that and say the mind of some writers …. Because I can’t speak on behalf of all writers, but I know others who deal with some of the same things I do. My mind is kind of like a co-op with my characters. My stories are character driven, and in order to do that, I need to know how my characters would think, act, talk, feel in any given situation. They live in my head and speak to me to tell me the story line. I feel their emotions … sometimes over and over, in order to capture them on the page.

In July, 2011 I ran across an article about Samuel Hayes, who had drowned in a river with a blood alcohol content level of 0.27. Samuel was only sixteen-years-old. While I felt saddened by a life being cut short, the effect it had on my character, Katie McCabe was much greater. She asked to write a blog post about Samuel. A week later, we read an article about fourteen-year-old Takemi Rao who died of alcohol poisoning in her own home, and another post was written by Katie. We then went on an emotional journey as google searches revealed Samuel and Takeimi were not alone. More than 5,000 teens die every year due to alcohol related incidents. And sometimes, words are not enough, so Katie and I put together a video to help share our feelings about so many lives cut short. It wasn’t what they had a chance to do in life, but all the things they would never have a chance to experience which caused the greatest sorrow.

And there is a relevance for Katie which made her feel guilty. She has made the same sort of mistake Samuel, Takeimi, and the others made … but she didn’t die. Remembering What Isn’t To Be is the shortest piece in Diary of a Misfit, but if readers only remember one story in the collection, this is the one I hope sticks with them.

Takemi Rao, Samuel Hayes, Arman Partamian, Warren Kimber, Brett Elder, Shelby Lyn Allen, Dayne Cutler, Scotty Roberts, Dylan Lyford, Samara Stricklen, Elizabeth Mun, Paris Shorter, George Desdunes, Olivia Hyten, Jason Wren, Makamae Ah Mook Sang, Joe Loudon, Mackenzie Frazee, Karen Kappelman, Lexi Hagen—All these names have one thing in common—they died too soon.

Diary of a Misfit is available now for Kindle. A portion of the proceeds from Diary of a Misfit will go to the Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth.

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Katie photo © Drew Herron
Background photo © Kalvis Kalsers

Lost in the Hills is the first published excerpt from Katie’s diary. From the Journal of Katie McCabe was added to the beginning of Nowhere Feels Like Home as an excerpt from Katie’s diary to help bring any new readers who hadn’t read Misfit McCabe up to speed. Lost in the Hills is an expansion of the original journal entry.

The inclusion of the piece in Diary of a Misfit was an easy decision to make—it was the reason I knew Katie kept a diary. And I have always been ambivalent about it as a part of Nowhere Feels Like Home, not because I didn’t like it, but I am not a fan of prologues. I had woven in the information into the opening chapter of Nowhere Feels Like Home and it felt redundant to tack the diary excerpt to the beginning. But I have people I trust to guide me when I become confused about what should or should not be in the work. And they voted for it to stay, and since I was on the fence—it stayed. We all need a little outside objectivity from time to time.

The expansion includes more of Katie’s feelings about being abducted, nearly drowning, and trying to get home against some steep odds. Teaser: After moving in with her Uncle Charley, and cousins, Matt, Mark, and Sarah, Katie McCabe is excited to finally have her journal unpacked. So much has happened in the week since she’d left home, she doesn’t know where to start.

Diary of a Misfit is available now for Kindle. A portion of the proceeds from Diary of a Misfit will go to the Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth.

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Tim photo © Alptraum
Creek photo © David Coleman

Tim’s Shiner is the first story in Diary of a Misfit and was one of the reasons Diary of a Misfit was written. As a writer, I had to get the story out. And it proved to me something I had not thought possible before … I could actually write a short story with the right circumstances in place.

I am a novelist by nature. My ideas don’t come in short work form, but are always more geared to longer works. I have attempted short stories in the past, but nothing satisfied me because I wanted to write the full story and stopping short felt incomplete, and so the story died a swift death while an inner battle raged.

Tim’s Shiner was different. I had already written the full story … well, I’m still writing the story, but working on book four in the series … and I didn’t feel the same need to complete the story because I looked at the short as a scene and not a complete work. I also already knew the characters well, and that might be a part of why other short stories are hard for me to write. The characters develop as I write, and I get to know them along the way. A short story doesn’t have enough words for me to become properly acquainted with the characters.

And Tim’s Shiner was something I had wanted to write for a while. A chance to give a bit more of Katie’s best friend’s background, and to show their relationship in a younger time. Before everything changed.

The teaser: When her best friend Tim shows up on her doorstep with a black eye, Katie McCabe teases him for being a klutz, until she learns the horrifying truth.

Diary of a Misfit is available now for Kindle. A portion of the proceeds from Diary of a Misfit will go to the Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth.

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Photo credit: © Drew Herron

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve had my head down, working away, and, except for the occasional outburst on Twitter, have even kept my socializing to a minimum (and those who know me, KNOW how I love to socialize.) But BECAUSE of my dedication to getting things done (okay, so the muse has been threatening me), I was able to announce my involvement in the Story Chairs project a couple days ago and NOW I get to share with you another project I’ve been working on

Diary of a Misfit

The idea for Diary of a Misfit started when my character, Katie McCabe, wanted to start blogging; the topics were situations she felt strongly about and the types of issues which happen throughout the course of the Misfit McCabe series. After she posted a few, I realized these were topics she would have journaled about in her diary … and Diary of a Misfit was born.

For me the short collection is akin to the extras at the end of the blu-ray or DVD. There are some scenes I knew about, but couldn’t put in the book, like Tim’s Shiner because they happened before the series starts, as well as a merging of real life into the world of Katie McCabe. And there are author notes scattered throughout, giving a bit of additional insight. I am proud of this collection, perhaps in part because I never thought I had it in me to write short fiction, and because it has a unique blend of elements.

And one more thing, before my taskmaster puts me back to work on the next project (announcement coming soon… I hope) with this short collection I wanted not only to give extras to my readers, I wanted to also give back. So, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth—an organization with an emphasis on youth suicide prevention. Too many teens have lost hope, and lives are cut short before their time. We need to help.

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Photo of Tim: © Alptraum | Dreamstime.com
Creek Photo: © David Coleman | Dreamstime.com

In a Read it before you can buy it measure, I’ve decided to post a few snippets from the companion book to the Misfit McCabe series I have been working on. The title of the eventual book is Diary of a Misfit and will be available in ebook only (or at least that’s the plan for now). I am concurrently working on the companion book and One Way Ticket Home which will be the fourth book in the series.

Anyway, while working on the stories, which will be parts of Katie McCabe’s diary, giving a little of the background which doesn’t actually make it into the novels, Katie’s thoughts on some of the things that happen in the books, as well as her thoughts on current events.

Tim’s Shiner is a glimpse into the past with Katie and her best friend, Tim Lawrence and gives some insight on Tim’s family situation. I’m going to post the first couple paragraphs here, and then provide a link to the full story (which is 3,100 words, so short and quickly read).

When her best friend Tim shows up on her doorstep with a black eye, Katie McCabe teases him for being a klutz, until she learns the horrifying truth.

Tim’s Shiner

I ran into my room and dove on the bed. How could I be such a horrible friend? My eyes traced the whorls in the ceiling support beam as tears welled. I hammered my fist against the mattress. Frustration and rage made me want to scream, but if I did, Timmy might hear me. And that would make things worse.
     Closing my eyes, I inhaled deeply. As I forced the air out of my lungs, I grabbed my diary from the nightstand and sat up. Maybe writing everything out would help.
     Today started off like any other day. But it might have ended as the worst day in all my twelve years….

* * * * *

“Katie, hurry up!”
     Most people knocked on the door, but not Timmy. When we had plans, he’d stand on the grass outside my room and yell.
     “The fish’ll be takin’ a nap if you wait much longer.” He held both our fishing poles and the can for worms.
     I poked my head out the window. “Keep your pants on, why doncha? I just hafta get my shoes on.” Scrambling to the closet, I shoved my feet into sneakers, and headed out the door, laces flopping with each step. I yanked the front door open and a blast of heat barreled in. Another scorcher, but summer would be over too soon, the weather would cool, and we’d be stuck inside.

Link to the Complete Story: Tim’s Shiner – Absolutely Free!

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