Drumroll, Please…

Hello everyone! Long time, no see, I know. But I have some big news that might make it easier to forgive me for my absence these past few months…

I am publishing my second book!

In a little less than two weeks, I will be publishing Portrait of a Sunset, the first and arguably the best novel that I have written (not to mention the one that is closest to my heart). A few years ago, I got publishing deal for this book, and it seemed like things were going great…until the publisher wanted me to change the very things that made my book MY book. They wanted me to change the way the main character spoke, and change her personality, just for the sake of making the book sound more like the other books they had published, but I couldn’t do it. Even if it meant that I wouldn’t achieve my dream of being a published author (Chase and Charlie was still in the “writing” phase at this time), I had to back out of the deal, because Clara, my main character, means a lot to me, and I couldn’t sacrifice her story just for the sake of seeing my name in print.

So, I broke the contract, and the book went back into my file cabinet…until a few months ago, when I decided that the time has come to share it with the world. I strongly believe in this book, and I know that it deserves to be in print, so I am going to publish it myself on Createspace and Kindle Direct Publishing.

Self-publishing might not be the “traditional ” route according to some writers and readers, but I believe in this book – and in myself – enough to give it a try. It has already been a long, hard journey, and it is only just getting started. But I hope you’ll come along on that journey with me, and check out Portrait of a Sunset when it’s released on October 28, 2016.

Until then, here is a sneak peak at the cover:

From now on, I will be more active on this blog, as well as on other social media outlets. Later this week, I will be posting an interview I did for the Books and Such blog, so stay tuned! In the meantime, enjoy a peek at the back cover summary as well!

“When I met Casey Linderman, I was a shell of the person I used to be—or worse: the shell of the person I thought I should have been…”

For Clara Halpert, an artist at heart, life is full of color and vivacity—until her older sister Charlotte is brutally murdered. With her family broken, her dreams shattered, and her creativity smothered by the overwhelming weight of grief and guilt, Clara’s once-bright, once-colorful future is quickly fading to grey.

Now tasked with completing a round of hospital-mandated group therapy sessions at the local YMCA, Clara has hit rock bottom. She has resigned herself to feeling lost and lonely forever…

Until she meets Casey Linderman.

Like her, Casey has more than his own fair share of dark secrets and terrible regrets to live with, but that doesn’t stop him from making Clara feel something that she hasn’t felt for a long time: hope.

Together, the two must find a way to navigate themselves (and each other) through the maze of their inner darkness and back to the light of sanity and completeness. No matter how hard Clara and Casey try to move on, however, they can never completely outrun the pasts that define them, the pasts that still haunt them both physically and emotionally. While Clara’s traumatic memories and overwhelming anxiety threaten to drown her, Casey’s dark history manifests itself in a much more corporeal, much more lethal way.

Can these two broken people find a way to escape the pasts that cripple them and become whole again? Or will taking a risk and opening themselves up to one another only manage to hurt them even more?