A dead child.
A girl locked away for his murder.
A mysterious gift.
Locked up for the murder of a boy she tried to save, eighteen year old Aleeta Veritras is determined to bring the real killer to justice.
Except, no one believes she didn’t do it. No one believes the strange gift she claims helped her find the boy. And no one believes that last night, locked in her cell, she glimpsed the killer again for the first time in three years.
But the more she digs, the more she finds herself tangled in lies. And there are those who will kill to keep the truth hidden.
“Truth Seeker” is a crime/thriller with a hint of the paranormal.
Link.
Writing this book was a long journey. I wrote the first draft all the way back in 2012. I used it in one of the editing courses I completed, filling it full of red pen for months before ripping it all apart, writing three separate outlines before finding the right one. Then it was time to start the real work! I rewrote the entire thing from scratch. Then the red pen came out again.
Three years after writing the first word it’s as ready as it’ll ever be.
When I wrote this I was going through a hard time. I was applying for job after job and getting nowhere. I had a lot to offer. A lot of tenacity, a lot of dedication and skill. I was frustrated. Once, I applied to a post where I knew someone in the company. They told me they had to stand up for me in order for me to get it. Why? What was so terrible about me that I kept on getting turned down?
I’m autistic.
Now I can’t be sure that was the problem every time, but in that case it definitely was. And from the amount of times I’d be turned down for not answering a question in a straight forward manner, or ‘not being the right fit’ I guess my autism was seen as a bigger problem than I’ve ever considered it to be. I declared my autism, I’d be turned down. I didn’t declare it, I’d be turned down (it can be pretty obvious in stressful situations like interviews). I made it to interview level for medical school two years in a row. At every school I failed the interview due mostly to poor ‘non verbal communication skills.’
I was angry. I wanted to prove myself to the world, and at every turn got held back. So I wrote this book.
Aleeta has a gift. That gift has the power to do great things. And there’s nothing Aleeta wants more than to do great things with this gift. Sounds simple, right? Sounds like the basis for any good superhero.
But life isn’t simple. More often life will look at what you can’t do instead of what you can. It will jump to blame and be slow to reward. And somehow through all that you need to stay open to the possibility that things will change. That the dream you’re holding will come true.
Aleeta’s struggle has more guns and missing children than mine did, but looking back a lot of my feelings echoed in her. Along with some of the realizations I came to at the time. In case you missed it, here’s the link again.
Coming up soon are lots of short stories and some more books in the Crystal Wolves stories. Here’s the link to the first in that series.
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