The paperback version of my young adult novel, Wild Ones, will be released in April.   It is already available for Kindle. Over the next few weeks I am going to share insights about what inspired me to write Wild Ones, as well as details on the back story. I hope you’ll come along for the journey.

A few years ago I read a magazine article about several teenaged girls in the foster care system, who had committed suicide while staying at a school for troubled teens. It haunted me that these girls had led such a wretched life in foster care that they felt suicide was their only way out.

I started writing the novel from the perspective of one girl, Breeze Jordan, who had been shuffled through a series of foster homes after her mother died. I posited, ‘But what if the school was actually a sanctuary where the girls felt safe and a place they belonged?’ And so Wild Ones was begun.

I wrote about ten pages, got involved in another project, and set Wild Ones aside. Then in 2007 I was looking for a project to work on for NaNoWriMo and finished the novel. A few more years, much research, and many rewrites later, it has finally been published.

The opening chapter sets the stage with Breeze’s mother taking her to a BLM (Bureau of Land Management) wild horse roundup in Oregon, just before her death. The photos shown here are from a BLM roundup fifteen years ago where I took my own daughter.

Next week I’ll share the inspiration for the Double-T Ranch. If you wish to read the opening chapters, visit the Amazon link at: http://tinyurl.com/mg6bbbf