The GHOST Group, Book One, is OUT NOW!!

It's Launch Day for my middle grade paranormal mystery series! Hooray!

The debuting stories in The GHOST Group series, The Ghosts of Sarah Travers and The Crying Valentine, are now available as an ebook! There will be a print edition in the future containing the first 4 stories. Each print book will contain 4 of the 12 stories as they are published. For now, you can read the first two as an ebook in Book One!

I got the idea for this series several years ago. The characters were there, their treehouse was there, but I didn’t have all of the pieces of the story just yet. It was as I was working on the haunted cities book many months later when the whole story came to me. I was curious about what it's like to live in a haunted city and the many accounts from people living in those cities caught my interest! I realized the characters I'd created in that workshop of my mind were part of a ghost hunting team, but instead of finding ghosts, they helped them! But each story would have a theme. Now I knew what kind of series it would be. Each story would center around a holiday for each month of the year – thus why there are 12 stories. I’m playing around with the idea of continuing the series after the 12 are done, with the kids in high school and with the stories on a new theme, but not sure if I’ll move forward with that just yet.

Many thanks to Denise Bartlett and Charlotte Holley of Gypsy Shadow Publishing for accepting this series for publication, as well as Manon Daniels for the amazing cover! I would also like thank Beth Bartlett for her help, as well as my beta readers.

You can check out these stories, The Ghost of Sarah Travers and The Ghost of The Crying Valentine, at this link.

You can also read an excerpt at that link.

Here is the synopsis for each story:

There’s something different about Sarah Town. It’s brimming with ghosts—and some of those ghosts need help! That’s where the GHOST Group comes in—the Ghost Helpers of Sarah Town. The GHOST Group is made up of five 11-year-old team members: Jesse, Jenny, Ryan, Trent, and Cassie.

The Ghost of Sarah Travers is the story about Sarah, who Sarah Town was named after. Her ghost haunts what used to be her home, but can the kids help her find who she is looking for before the town skeptic brings an end to ghosthunting in Sarah Town for good?

The Ghost of the Crying Valentine has the Ghost Group solving the mystery of a sad ghostly girl haunting their school. Rumors about this girl ghost catch the attention of a TV show, and the kids lock horns with the show host as they try to help the crying ghost.


These stories are written for middle grade readers but I hope adult readers will enjoy the stories, too. This is my 13th book!  (I also have an electronic short story published by Gypsy Shadow Publishing.) On an interesting note, this is also my third book in three months this year. April saw the release of Hunter's Upcycling Adventures, in May we had Satyrs Are Cool, and now in June we have The GHOST Group! On another interesting note, all 3 books were written for kids.

I have completed the third story in this series and I'm currently working on fixing up the fourth story. I look forward to seeing more books in this series released in the near future!

Finding time to write in the summer

It is almost officially summer! As a writing parent, that means getting creative with finding time to write. Of course I am serious about my writing, but time with my children comes first. Also, we have activities and a couple of other things planned for the summer, so that's something I'll have to consider, as well.

The big thing about being a writing parent is that I refuse to make my being a writer this huge “secret.” I don’t write in a secret room or only when the kids are sleeping. I plant myself in the living room and allow the kids to see their mom writing. The children understand that Mommy writes books and needs to work on her book every day. I tell my daughter, a young author, the same thing: Write every day. So when they see me writing in my book, they respect this – that is, until there’s a crisis or the two of them start fighting. These writing sessions usually don’t last for very long, and with as much writing work as I have going on this summer, I’ll need to find some extra time to get more work done.

To start with, I need to spread the book work out. Because I’m working on 4 WIPs this summer, I can work on 2 books on Mondays and Wednesdays, then 2 books on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Fridays can be used for catching up on work I could not get done. (I don’t usually work on my books on the weekends, but during the summer, I need to make that happen!)

One thing I can do to have time to write is get up early or stay up late. This way, in addition to my normal writing time during the day, I can have extra writing time in the morning or at night. Because my days are completely unpredictable, it could go either way.

Playdates are also nice. A mom who lives across the street has a son who is the same age as my own boy, and the two of them get together every weekend for a playdate. We take turns hosting playdates, and when it’s her turn, that is time right there to write.

My son is signed up for summer school for two days a week. These are ideal times I will have to work on my books – definitely more than one hour of writing time. The time the kids are in school is designated as “me time” – time to write, read or enjoy a movie. The same goes during the summer. While my son is at summer school, I’ll have more time to write. (The oldest is more understanding about my need to have time to write while her brother is at school so there’s no need to worry there.)

Sometimes, I’ll “hire” my oldest, my daughter, to watch my youngest, my son, for an hour so I can have time to write. This is usually when I absolutely NEED the time to work on a book and can’t seem to fit in the time, and it usually works out really well. My daughter is happy to earn a little money from babysitting, anyway. She wants to take on some babysitting jobs when she gets a little older, and this is good practice for her.

These are pretty much the best ways for me to get some writing time during the summer. I don’t want to miss out on summer fun with my children and the time I have with them is very important because they’ll be grown up and living on their own before I know it! So in order to have time to write and be able to enjoy the summer with my kids, these are going to be the methods I will have to start putting to use if I want to get some writing done.