Hi there. I wanted to check in and let you all know that I am almost done with my second YA novel, entitled Dredged Up. I am so excited about the book and I just love the characters. Like Cinnamon Girls, it is a bit edgy, and concerns a character who is a passionate misfit and his like-minded friends, who happen to be girls. It is partly set in my current home town, Santa Monica — a place that has gorgeous exteriors and more complicated inner workings…
Dredged Up is the story of a Junior at Santa Monica High, Aiden Averill, who has an out of character moment ihat spurs him to deck the school’s celebrity, pop star Jacob Hangar. Aiden is banished to Edgemont Academy, a stuffy boarding school in Virginia. There, through an encounter at the school’s lake, he discovers he is not the only one on campus with full blown skeletons in his closet…

It only took me a year to write this one as I have gotten better at morphing into “writer-warrior” mode and defending my writing time, no matter what else is going on in my life. Thanks to all my friends and loved ones who have supported me — again — and to my husband who has rightfully said, “You are really hung up on high school.”