H is for Homeless, Helpless, Hero or...

H is for Homeless, Helpless and Hero or…Knapsack Secrets. Why? 

Homeless, yes; Helpless, yes; Hero it takes a while for her to discover that. Because Audrey is all of the above or so she thinks. 

Sometimes all that is needed is something to test our metal to determine if any or all of our thoughts are true. While Audrey is homeless, sort of, she finds a new home that is full of more love and life than the old one ever was. She may be jobless, but she is not without a purpose.

While Audrey is feeling quite helpless, when someone else needs help, she finds her own strengths and courage to help them and thus erase her own feelings helplessness.

Audrey is a hero to Valentine Azusa, and to her young friend Zip (you can meet him again in his own story Cold Water) she actually is her own hero when she makes up her mind to uncover what happened to her career, her husband, and her life but she also helps Valentine survive, and Zip come to grips with his quandary with gangs, homelessness and abandonment.  

Yes, Audrey went from homeless, helpless and destitute to friend, survivor and never homeless or helpless, at least for now. And now is where we live and all that really matters.

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Clever, Friendships, Cold Water

Clever, friendships and what happens in Cold Water the Young Adult Mystery Suspense novel by Billie A Williams

What is a friend? How do you build friendships?
Zip is Clever, but is he so clever that he doesn't need a friend?

These are all questions that the free Readers Guide will ask about Cold Water. Here is a snippet of the chapter where Zip is befriended by a suddenly homeless woman. Why?

Zip shot his skateboard into the alley. He stopped short. His heart beat so hard he thought it would burst through his ribs. He gulped for air. His lungs hurt from the chase. He had forgotten the new addition to the factory had closed his favorite escape route. Now what? He was doomed. As he was about to try to climb over the fence separating the buildings, he heard the dogs. Were they in the connecting yard or down the street? Panic tied his insides into tighter and tighter knots. Despite the cold, he broke out in a sweat. If not over the fence, where? He couldn’t’ reach the top of the fence anyway, but maybe if he…

“Over here,” a woman’s voice called to him.

He jerked to attention. He scanned the dark alley for the source of the voice. He didn’t see anyone.

“In here, quickly.”

The lid on the paper recycling bin raised high enough that he could see a splash of white skin and the top of a woman’s head. Zip froze in place.

“Hurry,” the woman’s voice sounded insistent, urgent. He bolted to the bin. She reached for his skateboard and he handed it to her. Beautifully manicured white female hands grabbed the board. Zip leapt up, bracing both hands on the edge of the bin to lift him up and over the edge. He somersaulted in and the lid came down quietly behind him. The box grew dark and silent. The delicate smell of vanilla perfume slid by his nostrils. What street person wore perfume?

“Sh,” the lady’s voice said.

Zip held his breath as he heard Snake and Tony’s sneakers slap, slapping up the street and squeak to a stop at the end of the alley. Silence. He needed to swallow, but he was afraid it would make noise. His heart was loud enough. How do you quiet your heart, how do you keep it from beating so loudly, he thought.

Snake sped off down the alley and Tony bounced up to the top of the paper recycle bin and jumped off into the yard on the other side of the fence. The dogs snarled and barked. Tony obviously got past them or they were in the next yard. Then it grew silent again—dead silence slipped through his mind, like he might have been if it hadn’t been for the vanilla lady. 

Cold Water will be released July 1, 2012. Get your Readers Guide, questions, information and resources on bullying by emailing me here Billie A Williams put "Bullying" in the subject line.  And I will send it to you.

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Z Is For Zero, Zealot, Zip and...

Z is for Zero, Zealot, Zip in Cold Water and Zero Cemetery Lane

The grand finale of this A to Z Blog Challenge tour should end with a huge number, but instead it ends with the least number, zero. It could be Zero Cemetery Lane (A Cricket Sawyer paranormal Romantic Suspense) 

Or the address of The Bed and Breakfast Murders.

 Or, perhaps, our little friend Zip from Knapsack Secrets in his own young adult mystery suspense Cold Water.

All of these novels have one thing in common, the mystery element. Zero itself is a mysterious number, it holds the place of miniscule amounts or unfathomable mega amounts. 

The strangeness of the address number, Zero Cemetery Lane, is no accident. It is a real address in a tiny burg in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The address itself led to the creation of the mystery based on a piece of real estate not far from that address. Ask yourself who would feel safe having their address zero—no one—nothing could exist at zero—but it did— and the cemetery was close at hand with room for more to be planted.

Then whatever possessed a mystery novelist to name a character Zip, the character himself. Once profiled, an active African American teenager preferred the nick name to the moniker Ziegfeld. His nickname fit because of his restless, hurried manner of zipping from this to that and here to there. ADD, no, just super hyper activity of a busy mind and a need to move and the circumstances that wouldn't allow him the peace of home and mind.

All three novels play with Z. It may be the last letter of the alphabet, but when you are always last you try harder. And Z seriously delivers for a mystery suspense author.

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