ME AND YOU, BILLY Semifinalist in 2002 Faulkner-Wisdom Novel in Progress Competition in New Orleans. Received 2004 1st Chapter of a Novel Contest award from Byline Magazine. Placed as a semifinalist in 2008 Faulkner-Wisdom Novel Competition.
Feisty and flawed Megan Kelly, a thirty-something bartender, desperately wants to rescue her hard-drinking and homeless baby brother from himself. Before leaving the nightlife of the 1980s behind, she must stop their three other siblings from selling their heritage in the Alabama foothills of the Appalachians. When Megan's confronted with an chance to secure the family land, will she step across a moral line, just-this-one-time, to save Billy, and ultimately, herself, or damn them both?
Inspired by my experiences on both sides of the bar, Megan's story illuminates the complicated facets of familial love, the why behind the suicide-on-the-installment-plan lifestyle of addiction, and how redemption surfaces in the most unlikely places. __________________________________________________________________ KIN KEEPER
A character-driven novel in progress, set in contemporary Deep South. Maggie McGuire, the co-owner of a hair salon in her late twenties, never cared about tracing her roots. The only child of an absentee dad and an emotionally vacant, perpetual hippie mom, Maggie felt connected to family only during the summers she spent with her mom's two sisters.
Now, transporting her mother's recently cremated ashes from New Orleans to her aunts' home in Alabama, Maggie's in a car accident that results in temporary-fix surgery and a frantic search for an organ donor, preferably her father. However, no one, not even her elderly aunts, seems to know his name, much less where to look for him.
Confined to a hospital-style bed at her aunts' home, armed with just a laptop, Maggie embarks on an Internet safari, guided by YeTree.net. On her trek she meets eclectic and eccentric co-hunters, each obsessed with tracking their own family's spoor, yet effusively helpful to novices. Will they enable Maggie to see the past clearly, instead of viewing her parents through the prism of her resentments, in time to save her own life?
SHORT PROSE
My short fiction and personal essays have received numerous awards. Two character-driven short stories published in 2008: "Not Dead Yet" in Calliope and "Shelia's Sit and Sip" in The Rambler.
Writers Help Writers---> Pay It Forward---> Writers Help Writers---> Pay It Forward---> Writers HelpWriters---> Pay It
Forward--->