Young Adult

I’ve been writing young adult novels with Heather Doherty for several years now, but because I write primarily for the adult market, I’ve kept the YA strictly separate. However, as our catalogue of titles increases, I figure it’s time to give the YA at least a mention in this corner of my website.

At the moment, our young adult efforts fall into two categories—YA paranormal; and Pretty Little Liars fan fiction written for the Kindle Worlds program.

The latter is a very cool new publishing platform that allows authors/fans of particular worlds for which Amazon has negotiated appropriate licensing rights, to publish and sell novels and novellas which are inspired by those fictional worlds. We were actually commissioned to write a novel for the launch of this program.

Please check out our books:

The Casters Series

(which has its own website)

Comes the Night, #1

How far would you go to escape your own personal teenage hell? Would you run away, break away from everything you know—even your own body?

Alex Robbins, Brooke Saunders and Maryanne Hemlock could not be more different, yet they all have something in common—deep and soul-searing pain. They are also all students at Streep Academy, a boarding school just one step away from juvie, where they've come to complete high school. The three have been relegated to Harvell House, the residence reserved for the hardest cases, the so-called Rejects from Reject Row.

In the forbidden attic of the old Victorian house-turned-residence, the girls discover the diary of Connie Harvell, a young woman who was confined and abused there some 50 years ago. In the end, Connie’s attic prison couldn't hold her—not completely. She found a way out. At least a dark part of her did. And after reading her diary, the girls discover they can escape at will too. A terrifying, thrilling flight from their bodies and their troubles.

But God help them, their pain isn't all they leave behind when they join with the night.

And God help anyone who’s wronged them...

Enter the Night, #2

Alex Robbins, Brooke Saunders and Maryanne Hemlock, three troubled seniors at Streep Academy, have learned to escape their pain—escape their very bodies!—by casting a dark piece of themselves out through the stained glass window high in the attic of their dorm, Harvell House.

Casting has been the salvation of each of the girls, but particularly for Maryanne. The wholesome good girl of the trio, Maryanne nevertheless harbors a secret—and a darkness—unrivaled by tattooed scenester Alex or beautiful badass Brooke. Casting has provided Maryanne such reprieve from her guilt and pain, it’s become like a drug. But as with any drug, it only masks the real problems. And brings dangers of its own.

When Maryanne starts dating Bryce Walker, son of the notorious “Heller” hunter Ira Walker, is it first love, or is it a darker, more self-destructive impulse at play? As the superstitious citizens of Mansbridge begin to mutter and scan the night skies for Hellers, can the hunted lie down with the hunter and emerge unscathed?

Embrace the Night, #3

Thanks to Brooke, she, Maryanne and Alex are trapped even deeper in the Caster world, and inside their dark selves. Racing the clock, they must find a way back before they find themselves stranded in the very night they sought to claim.

But even as they search for a solution, the Heller stories are growing, giving rise to panic among the superstitious citizens of Mansbridge. Armed with fury, fire and iron, the hunters are looking to “send the Hellers back to hell.” And this time, it’s more than just the usual handful of vocal Heller haters. It’s a mob.

But the Casters have a righteous fury of their own. God help anyone who dares harm one.

Forever the Night, #4

Four years have passed since Alex’s and Maryanne's casts blasted back into their bodies. But Brooke didn't make it back.

It was Brooke's recklessness that got them locked out in the first place, and her sacrifice that got her friends back in. Now, with Brooke's paralyzed body deteriorating and her caster self going mad with loneliness, Alex and Maryanne know they have to find a way to get Brooke's cast back before her ailing body fails ... or they'll die trying. With Melissa Kosnick, the region's most motivated, passionate Heller hunter, following their every move, the "die trying" part is a real possibility.

The young women will need all the help they can get – from both the living and the dead – if Brooke is to escape a sentence of lonely exile, stranded forever in the night. But more, they'll need each other in this desperate test of faith, friendship and survival.

Gatekeeper Series

The Summoning, #1

All is not well in Chthonic City, Maine. People are anxious, sleepless. Road rage is on the rise, and the ERs overflow with domestic and workplace violence. Why? Because the citizens of Chthonic City are having recurring, terrifying nightmares about demons rising to walk among them, and they’re snapping.

In fact, demons ARE rising. Slowly. One at a time, to dwell unnoticed among us as they multiply our misery. And they’re rising in Chthonic City where the veil between the Chthonic (the Underworld for which the City was named, though the meaning of the word has been long forgotten) and earthly reality is very thin.

Demons cannot rise until a human soul is driven mad. Over the millennia, demons have crossed as they could, but never before has humanity been so stressed as it is now in the Western world. Never before have we been so starved for time, touch, meaning, purpose. Never have our circuits been so overloaded with gloom and doom, economically, environmentally, spiritually. Never before have the demons had such a vulnerable population. Scenting a chance to break free in numbers, they hurl themselves into our dreams, battering at our sanity.

But these demons are not unopposed. In a crumbling church on the edge of town, an ancient Guardian has been watching and waiting. When the threat from the Underworld surges, the Guardian's job is to send out a call to a fresh crop—a cell—of Gatekeepers, and train them to descend into the Chthonic through the dream state and do battle with the demons, slaying them there before they can cross the threshold.

In Chthonic City, a new cell of Gatekeepers—teenagers all—has just been summoned...

Stand Alone Titles

Ashlyn’s Radio

Ashlyn Caverhill has left behind her senior year of high school to live with her grandmother, and she's not happy about it. Small-town Maine has nothing on Toronto. But her mother is ill, and there's nowhere else to go. Even though it contains one Caden Williams—the hottest guy she's ever seen—Ashlyn thinks Prescott Junction is the deadest place ever. She may be right.

A lot of people seem to die mysteriously down by the long-abandoned train tracks. Her own father died there before she was born. The townspeople whisper about a ghost train that comes for the souls of Prescott Junction's most troubled citizens, but Ashlyn scoffs—until one night she sees the train for herself and its ghoulish conductor nearly coaxes her on board.

Ashlyn's fear grows when she finds an old radio that haunts the Caverhill family. They've thrown it out. It comes back. They've buried it. It comes back. They've sunk it in the lake, and still it comes back. Even though it's never plugged in, the radio broadcasts stories of future events that always come to pass. Imagine Ashlyn's horror when the radio's top story is "Ashlyn Caverhill boards the ghost train."

Now, with the help of Caden and her new friend Rachel, Ashlyn must find a way to escape the radio's curse before she's forced to ride the ghost train forever.

Kindle Worlds—Pretty Little Liars

The Deep End

Emily, Hanna, Aria and Spencer continue their torrid, tempestuous high school lives in a sensational story inspired by of the New York Times, best-selling young-adult series, Pretty Little Liars. This time out, the intrigue begins in the school swimming pool. Early one morning, Emily mysteriously loses her vision and begins thrashing around blindly. She is “saved” by the intervention of Rosewood’s blindingly handsome new swim coach, Anderson McKay. Hanna, meanwhile, is suspected by both her mother and police of stealing a gaudy, expensive bracelet from a local jewelry store. Aria remains very much in love with one of her teachers. And as for Spencer, she’s involved with an older man at the Rosewood Country Club. What with detectives combing their high school for the clues to the death of the pretty little liars’ classmate and long-time nemesis, Alison DiLaurentis, and the continued, text-message harassment of their mysterious persecutor, “A,” Emily, Hanna, Aria and Spencer are once again floundering in the deep end.

Little Bones

Emily, Aria, Hanna, and Spencer are aghast when shown a video of their darkest secrets. The Pretty Little Liars are blackmailed into spend a weekend at the Jacob House, a desolate Gothic mansion, where they must perform certain “tasks” if they want the incriminating material returned. Armed for their ordeal with a Ouija board that Aria was given, they apprehensively spend their first night at the creepy manor and are startled when elderly Nanny Carrie Deering arrives. She was the nanny for London, the daughter of Professor Jacob and his wife, who mysteriously disappeared. In a séance, the girls contact a spirit—young London’s—trapped in the Ouija board, and overcome their fears to free it. But their ordeal continues when they discover an ancient doll belonging to the dead child and learn that her bones may still haunt the house—and them. The four friends must summon their courage and trust in each other to grasp that the secrets of the Jacob House are much darker than their own.