Category: Young Adult Fiction

Almost Time to Walk the Camino Frances One More Time!

The time for our next adventure is FAST approaching. Michael and I are about to fly back to Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago once again! This time we will be walking from LEON to SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA. It’s all time will allow us to do. So excited to get back to Spain!

I’ve been watching my countdown app for almost a year now and it finally ticked over to UNDER 30 DAYS today!

And at the same time this happened, I received a Google Alert for THE CAMINO CLUB. It is featured in a blog post on BOOKS ON THE CAMINO and I could not be more thrilled to see it in such good company!

The website is TRAVEL BOOKS AND MOVIES. I’m so glad they featured my book in this post because two of my favourite things are 1) Travel Books and 2) Travel movies. Definitely going to be scouring this site for ideas…hopefully I discover books and movies I somehow missed until now.

Here’s the direct link to the article in which THE CAMINO CLUB is mentioned:

Buen Camino: 15 Books About the Camino de Santiago

I’ve read 12 of these titles (plus my own title a thousand times through the editing process), so I’m already excited to have discovered two new Camino titles to explore!

My novel, THE CAMINO CLUB, was a Silver Winner in the Teen Fiction category of the 2020 Benjamin Franklin Book Award.

In just 29 days we will be heading back to Spain…and a couple of days after that we will set out from Leon to walk the beautiful Camino once again. Can’t wait!

If you haven’t read THE CAMINO CLUB yet, now’s the time! Also…check out the link above to the 15 Camino books. There’s some great reads on that list!

 

 

7 YEARS! Pride Must Be A Place Celebrates an Anniversary!

I can’t believe that PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE released SEVEN years ago today!

I remember writing that book like it was yesterday, I swear. I wrote most of it at the Muskoka Novel Marathon. Shortly after the marathon, Michael and I stayed a week at his sister’s cottage and I completed the first draft. We took long walks throughout the day and discussed the plot. It was amazing talking a story through prior to writing it down. We narrowed down the possibilities and I wrote in a fevered pace in order to get to the end. It was probably the most fun I ever had writing a book. The collaborative effort–of talking it out–was a new experience for me and a welcome one.

It was originally published by MuseItUp Publishing out of Montreal, Canada. They were the publisher who published my debut novel, SUMMER ON FIRE($3.99 on Amazon or free with Kindle Unlimited).

MuseItUp has since shuttered its doors. But you can still read PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE. I’ve since made it available on Amazon as a paperback or ebook. It’s $2.99 or FREE with Kindle Unlimited. CLICK HERE TO SEE IT ON AMAZON.

Here’s the synopsis for PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE:

Ezra Caine is gay. He’s sort of out at school but not at home, where he fears the wrath of his father’s bigotry. When Ezra’s flamboyantly out friend Alex Mills takes one too many beatings from homophobic bully Will Carter, Ezra finally snaps. Fed up with the situation at school, he decides to do something about it. With the help of his BFF, Nettie, and some unlikely allies, Ezra rallies to create their small-town school’s first gay-straight alliance. The Rainbow Alliance Club is formed. But the changes don’t come without hiccups, one of which being a messy scandal involving Alex and a gay hook-up app. As Ezra and his friends attempt to sway their school into an alliance of tolerance and acceptance, Ezra experiences a few surprises of his own on the home-front. He also learns the hard way that friendships out of convenience aren’t always a good idea, just as some enemies might not be as bad as he originally imagined them to be.

Pick up a copy today! It would be a great way to celebrate its BIRTHDAY! (-; CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR COPY OF PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE

Would you look at the little baby holding the first copy fresh off the press!

Proud parent moment—holding your creation for the first time in book form is always a little piece of magic!

If you have KINDLE UNLIMITED, I have quite a few books in the program. Which means you can read them for free as part of your KU package. Here’s a list:

Burn Baby Burn Baby

Sebastian’s Poet

Half Dead & Fully Broken

The Reasons

Pride Must Be A Place

Summer on Fire

LGBTQIA2 Pride – Why I Still Love PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE

5 years ago today, I received the ORANGE BANNER treatment on Amazon for my brand new young adult novel PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE! For those who don’t know, the orange banner indicates BEST SELLER. You get it when your book hits #1!

Happy 5th Anniversary of being #1, book!

It was such a moment, writing Pride Must Be A Place! I remember where I was, who I was…everything about the experience! Such a pivotal moment. What a rush!

I wrote quite a lot of it at the 72hr Muskoka Novel Marathon during the summer of 2015. A week later, Michael and I spent a week at his sister’s cottage and I wrote the remainder of the novel. We would take long walks during the day and discuss the story-line. It was a magical time I still hold dear.

Whenever a writer thinks back on a book they wrote, it’s often that time in their life that they reflect on. It makes them either love or hate their book more…the book is like a litmus test to the time in which they wrote it. That’s the way it works for me, anyway. I LOVE this book! I still love the book because it immediately brings me back to that time when I wrote it!

Desk shot – Muskoka Novel Marathon.

Click THIS LINK to visit my post about how Pride Must Be A Place is tied in with Lorraine Segato of The Parachute Club.

PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE Synopsis:

Ezra Caine is gay. He’s sort of out at school but not at home, where he fears the wrath of his father’s bigotry. When Ezra’s flamboyantly out friend Alex Mills takes one too many beatings from homophobic bully Will Carter, Ezra finally snaps. Fed up with the situation at school, he decides to do something about it. With the help of his BFF, Nettie, and some unlikely allies, Ezra rallies to create their small-town school’s first gay-straight alliance. The Rainbow Alliance Club is formed. But the changes don’t come without hiccups, one of which being a messy scandal involving Alex and a gay hook-up app. As Ezra and his friends attempt to sway their school into an alliance of tolerance and acceptance, Ezra experiences a few surprises of his own on the home-front. He also learns the hard way that friendships out of convenience aren’t always a good idea, just as some enemies might not be as bad as he originally imagined them to be.

I know it won’t get to the ORANGE BANNER status again, but if you haven’t read PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE…consider picking it up today! It’s good!

AMAZON USA: Pride Must Be A Place

AMAZON CANADA: Pride Must Be A Place