Help Me Choose My Cover!

Vote On Your Favorite Cover!

After posting 5 different covers on Facebook, You have helped me to narrow it down to the two favorites.  Which do you like best?  Comment below or comment on my Facebook  page.

#1

#2

  

On His Birthday - Looking Back at MLK Jr

My novella series is inspired by Martin Luther King Jr's theology/philosophy of nonviolent resistance. As well as other movements from all over the world. I hope that my story can, in some small way, bring to life this rich history in a new way and inspire a new generation to make the world a better place.

Happy Birthday Dr King! 

Your life and words changed the world. Wish we had you here longer, there is so much more we could have learned from you!

Today is a good day to look back at the life of this amazing man who has changed and shaped history in so many ways.  

During the less than 13 years of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s leadership of the modern American Civil Rights Movement, from December, 1955 until April 4, 1968, African Americans achieved more genuine progress toward racial equality in America than the previous 350 years had produced. Dr. King is widely regarded as America’s pre-eminent advocate of nonviolence and one of the greatest nonviolent leaders in world history.

Drawing inspiration from both his Christian faith and the peaceful teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. King led a nonviolent movement in the late 1950’s and ‘60s to achieve legal equality for African-Americans in the United States. While others were advocating for freedom by “any means necessary,” including violence, Martin Luther King, Jr. used the power of words and acts of nonviolent resistance, such as protests, grassroots organizing, and civil disobedience to achieve seemingly-impossible goals. He went on to lead similar campaigns against poverty and international conflict, always maintaining fidelity to his principles that men and women everywhere, regardless of color or creed, are equal members of the human family.

-from About Doctor King at http://www.thekingcenter.org/about-dr-king 

An excerpt from Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" Speech

In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "For Whites Only". We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.  

His words are just as relevant today as when he spoke them. Our freedom is inextricably linked to the freedom of others. We must walk together until justice is offered for all of humanity. If one group in society isn't free than none of us are free!

  

  

Here are some great places to read more about his life and work:

• http://www.thekingcenter.org/about-dr-king
• http://www.biography.com/people/martin-luther-king-jr-9365086
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.

Sneak Peak of Resistance Unite: Awakening

Resistance Unite: Awakening 

Book #1 in Newtopian Chronicles Novella Series

One – Awakening

My muscles burn from the force I use as I methodically scrub the cracked pavement with my wood handled wire brush. I know that I must remove all signs of blood before Caade gets home from work. My face is hot and tears sting my cheek as I clean. My nose won’t stop dribbling so I suck in a deep breath, mingling the horrible aroma of cleaning solvent, dust turning to mud and human blood.  My mom’s long wavy hair falls forward as she kneels beside me scrubbing another pool of blood. She is completely unaware that the tips of her hair are dragging along the ground, getting matted with blood and muck as she forcefully thrusts her brush back and forth. She mumbles beside me rehearsing the words she plans to say to Caade. She hasn’t yet made it through Nettie’s last words without choking up and stopping to wipe the tears from her eyes several times. Although she speaks so quietly I can barely hear above the sound of metal scratching pavement, I can tell that her voice sounds wrong, instead of sweet and tender, husky and strangled, like a child after a powerful cry. I have never seen an adult cry so hard that they become childlike. Not until today. I can’t imagine how difficult it is to have to tell your best friend’s child that he will never see his mother again.

One Hour Earlier

I reach my fingers and toes straight out as far as possible in opposite directions taking a deep morning breath. The thick, acrid air burns the inside of my nose even before opening my eyes. Thrust from my pleasant dreams, I can feel the heaviness of the world around me the moment my consciousness moves into reality.  My skin feels sticky and my hair is matted to my forehead. The warmth of the sun seeping in through the open window is already beginning to feel too strong.

I stretch my legs well past the end of my mat. I don’t know if it was made for sleeping, but my orange spongy mat has made a very comfortable bed. My fourteen-year-old body does not fit quite as well as it did when Mom first brought it home three years ago. I naturally pull my knees up tight, so that my feet don’t hit the floor while I sleep. Curling up in a tight ball leaves me a little sore in the mornings. Still, I can’t complain, Caade and every other kid I know, sleeps with only pieces of cardboard between themselves and the cold hard floor.

I am extremely lucky that my mom found this mat for me in an alley behind a skyrise in Inner Newtopia. Of course, Mom wasn’t supposed to be strolling around the city, much less taking anything from the Elites. Her work visa only allows her to enter the district in which she works, Executive District, where she is a night janitor. This is where all of the corporate headquarters are located. I am not sure what they do in those skyrises, but it must be important.  Everything that Elites do is important.

Every evening, Mom walks to the West Common Rail Station and then rides an hour, halfway around the city, to the Common Gate. This is the only opening in the giant wall that surrounds Inner Newtopia. Once inside, she must walk nearly another hour along The Common Path to Executive District; she’s not allowed to ride the Elite Rail to work, which would get her there in under ten minutes.

In the daylight she could never risk diverging from The Common Path, but when Mom leaves work a few hours before sunrise, when few Elites have awoken, she slips through the residential districts cutting over a half hour off her exhausting commute. How she snuck this brightly colored mat through an off limits section of the city and then on to the Common Rail, I’ll never know. My mom amazes me; there isn’t anything she wouldn’t do for me.

I rub my eyes and roll over to watch Mom making breakfast. Her feet drag as she takes short, slow steps. She is obviously exhausted. Of course she is. She has already walked several miles today, not to mention the endless hours she spent cleaning toilets in the Elite’s skyrise offices.

These toilets, automatic, water-filled machines, sound like magic. I have never seen one, but maybe someday, if I get to go to University I will be able to use one. In The Commons, rowhouses only have a toilet seat that opens in the center to a deep, deep hole. There is a putrid river down below; they say it flows out to the sea eventually. We have to be very careful never to drop anything down the hole because if we do, it is gone forever!

Sometimes I feel jealous of my mom. I wish I could see Inner Newtopia too. I have never seen a skyrise before, but she has told me about them and all the beautiful things she has seen in the city. Mom says that at night the buildings shimmer from embedded lights glittering like the starry night sky.

Not that I have seen a real star since moving here. Most of my friends don't even believe me that they exist. The sky above The Commons is consistently a dull brown. It never changes. I imagine that we have immobile mud soaked clouds that hover just above us, but I don’t really know why our sky looks the way that it does. When I was a kid we lived near the coast, the sky was blue and I could see a million stars at night.

Daddy was an Electrotech at Solair Hydroelectric Corporation. Solair was a generous corporation.  On Daddy’s credits we could always afford enough food and we rented an uncommonly large rowhouse with vinyl floors, crystal clear glass windows and a division between the sleeping area and the daytime area. I even had my own room. Well, it was called a pantry, but it was the perfect size to cuddle up with my thermal blanket and sleep soundly at night, I loved my room.

One day, when I was eight years old, I was swinging on my tree swing when I saw some of Daddy’s friends carrying something up to our house.  I jumped up cheerfully to greet them, but when I got close, I saw they were not carrying something, they were carrying someone. His friends brought him inside and carried him into the sleeping area.  He didn’t look like my dad.  He looked like something broken.

“He’s been electrocuted!” Mom shouted when she saw his melted flesh. 

Daddy’s friend with a scruffy beard and work pants that were torn at the knees mumbled, “I’m sorry, Lyvia,” as he reached over and pulled her in for a comforting hug.

After that, Daddy was fired because he could no longer perform the duties of an Electrotech. We couldn't afford our beautiful home, besides as a former employee we were no longer eligible to live in Solair housing anyway.  Mom had to find work and being a janitor at Sanitation Network was the only job she could find. We were fortunate that she found a job so quickly. If she hadn’t we probably wouldn’t have survived. Just a week after Daddy’s accident, we left Solair Coastlands and moved to The Commons.

Poor Daddy, he never got better. The burns were so severe. When they began festering, we knew we only had a short time left with him, the infection was just too strong. It has been just mom and me for six years now. Remembering Daddy is painful.  He was ripped from my life so quickly. I wish I could just lay here and step back into my dream world, where Daddy was alive, I always had food in my belly, and we were a happy little family, but I can’t. That’s not my life anymore.

I sit up and shake my wrists and then roll my neck to break myself out of this morning funk. I must force myself to get out of bed.  I stand up, pick up my thin thermal blanket, fold it and place it on the shelf. Then I lift my mat, roll it from bottom to top into a tube shape and slide it between the wall and the shelf. The spot where I sleep is also the spot where we set up our table for breakfast.

 I trudge to the window opposite of the one my mom is cooking at and remove my green shorts, purple tank top, and underwear from our hanging clothes drying rack. I am glad that it has been hot enough to dry my clothes thoroughly at night. I hate having to put on slightly damp clothes in the morning.

I take my warm, crisp clothes, and head into the bathing room. Placing my clothes on top of the tightly sealed toilet lid, I turn to look into the amber tinted cracked mirror above the washbasin. My mousey brown hair falls in matted curls over my slightly sunburnt shoulders. I wish I would have remembered to braid my hair last night before bed.  It would be much easier to deal with this morning. My small comb tugs unhappily at my tangles, trying in vain to loosen them. 

The sounds of mom cooking breakfast in the window grill makes my stomach growl and reminds me how long it has been since our late afternoon dinner. We don’t have much, but mom has always made sure I have something to eat. We have never been without food, even if we could only afford a small portion of ProtoNutrien.

Every week mom sends me to buy a new power cell for the grill and our rations of ProtoNutrien with her credits from work. There have been a few times where our funds were so low that I had to work off the remaining credits at the market. Luckily, Caade works there and has a little pull with his superior. Unloading deliveries from the Common Rail was a hard job!  It took me several hours. Moving the boxes out of the railcar wasn't the hardest part; trucking them two and a half blocks was brutal. My back ached and my arms felt so weak afterward, but we had a hot dinner that night. I was even able to surprise mom with an egg and some wilted greens to add to our ProtoNutrien.

 “Tess-love, you sure are taking a long time in there,” Mom calls through the door, pulling me out of my thoughts and back into our bathing room.

“Uh…what?” I respond stupidly. Have I really been just staring at myself in the mirror for several minutes? Man, I feel so tired this morning.  I just can’t seem to break out of this groggy fog. Frustrated, I give up tugging at my hair.

“Finish your bathing and come set up the table.”

“Sure thing Mom,” I clumsily answer. I fill the basin with water from the hose, not too much though, because our rain barrel has to last until the next rain. Otherwise we have to buy water from the market and it is far too expensive to buy more than our drinking water. I dip my washcloth in the slightly warm water, wash my freckled face, my armpits and the other necessary areas, then I pull my green shorts over my straight, boy-like hips and button them. They have lasted me well. This is the second summer that I have worn them. I wonder if I will ever grow out of them.

“Hurry Tessa, ProtoNutrien is done and I am hungry!”

I quickly pull on my tank top and decide to finger comb my matted hair into a bun. I’ll deal with that later.  “Coming mom!” I yell as I rush out of the bathing room and quickly grab the folding table, knock the legs into place, flip it over and announce as if completing a race, “Done!”

“Chairs too, unless you want to stand to eat,” She smiles.

Mom sets the table with a bowl of hot watery ProtoNutrien porridge, our typical meal, a white flakey powder that consists of a perfect balance of protein, carbohydrates, fat and essential vitamins. Its flavor is so mild that it can be mixed with nearly anything. Ours is usually very bland since it is most often mixed with only water. Mom turns with a surprise in her open palm. She was able to afford an egg today. She hands me one half of a hard-boiled egg. Oh, how I love eggs. I often long for smooth, custardy eggs like we used to have in Solair Coastlands, but here it is a delicacy that we can rarely afford.

“Oh, Mommy, Mommy, you bought an egg. Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Nothing like a childhood favorite to make you act like a kid again.

As I take my first luxurious bite of my egg, mom asks, “What do you have planned today?”

On days that I am not in school, I like to stay out of the house after breakfast so Mom can pull out my mat and sleep in peace. “Hang out with Caade, like always.” I say with my mouth full. “He’s working at the market until ten, then we’ll probably find some other kids to play with. No real plan.”

“Tessa, you know I love Caade…” Mom begins hesitantly, “…as if he was my own child…but…you, you both, need to understand how dangerous his actions have been lately. People have started to whisper that Caade may be a rebel. If those whispers get to the Patrolmen, he’s in big trouble. You two need to stay safe, to lay low for a while. I don’t want you…”

I cut her off mid-sentence. I can’t let her believe that my best friend is up to no good. “Mom, Caade is as much of a rebel as you are!”  I say with slightly too much sass.  I can tell I am walking a thin line here but I can’t help myself from continuing. “You sneak across Inner Newtopia every night! He got caught trying to climb over the wall and go into The Wilds. They said he was going to sneak into Inner Newtopia, but he wasn’t, he just wanted to explore the forest.”

A Patrolman chased Caade up the wall and pulled him down, beat him, gave him a black eye and bruised ribs, before dragging him by his long sun bleached hair back into The Commons. He was lucky he didn’t get in more trouble.  He could have been arrested for this. He could have been sent to Reprogram.

“Besides, he needs me today,” I continue. “I could hear his mom and dad fighting until late in the night last night. He’ll need someone to talk to.”

Mom locks onto my eyes for longer than feels comfortable. Her face is pained but her eyes seem like they are almost smiling. Confused and afraid, I worry I have made her angry. Am I in trouble? Did I cross the line? Please don't be mad at me! Please don’t ask me to stay home today!

“Just be careful Tess-love. I worry about you. Having people suspect you are a rebel is dangerous, very dangerous. Caade made a very bad decision. The Patrolmen could have arrested him on the spot for trespassing onto private property. Every bit of land between the wall and Inner Newtopia is owned by Wilderness Conservation, and they are very protective of their land. We are not allowed to enter The Wilds, ever!” Mom glances toward the wall that separates our unit from Caade’s and unexpectedly changes the subject, “Do you know what they fought about?”

I shake my head. I try hard not to listen when Nettie and Randt fight.  It can get pretty ugly when he is drunk.  I laid awake last night plugging my ears and worrying about Caade.

Mom sighs heavily, “Tessa, can you clean up the breakfast table and make the mat up for me while I go get ready for bed?” She quickly gets up, grabs her nightgown off the hanging drying rack and disappears into the bathing room. She must be really worried about Nettie; she has barely eaten a thing.

I greedily shove her half of the egg into my mouth, and say before swallowing, “You know Mom, for someone who was so hungry for breakfast, you sure didn’t eat much. Are you feeling okay?” I swallow quickly and then begin to gobble down her nearly full bowl of porridge.

A scream from outside stops me mid slurp and I run to the window. Just then I see Nettie turn the street corner, I hear her scream “Lyvia, help!” at the top of her lungs. Mom instantly slams open the bathing room door to see what is wrong. She rushes out the front door to see Nettie running up our walkway. Three Patrolmen with batons in hand turn the corner and quickly overtake her. Together they tackle her right in front of our doorway.

As Nettie falls, she hits her head on a cement step and begins bleeding profusely down the side of her face. Her cheeks quickly begin swelling where they’ve hit her. The world around me fades into blackness and all I see is the look of fear and pain on her nearly unrecognizable wet crimson face.

I don’t remember when I walked outside or fell to the ground, but I am on the front stoop and so is my mother. She is kneeling beside me crying and reaching out for her friend, while keeping a safe distance so the Patrolmen don’t turn their attack onto her for interfering.

Suddenly, Mom realizes that I have seen every bit of this right along with her. With a gasp, she wraps her arms around my head pulling me in close, trying to keep me from seeing the brutality unfolding steps outside of our home. I give in to her embrace but pull her hand away from my eyes and turn toward the woman crumpled in a pool of blood with giant ogres attacking her. The Patrolmen are rough, way too rough for a petite and undernourished woman, especially an innocent one!

She has to be innocent!

As they pull her broken, beaten body up off the pavement to arrest her and carry her away, she looks back at my mom with tears streaking down her bloody face and mumbles, “Take care of him…Tell him I love him…I love him.” Her head rolls down, she slumps forward and gives into her captors.

Pre-Order Resistance Unite Awakening

Coming January 31st, 2016

Book #1 in Newtopian Chronicles Novella Series 
Resistance Unite: Awakening– In a post American future where the line between the haves and the have-nots has been firmly drawn, Tessa Morgan, a naïve teenager from The Commons is forced to acknowledge the injustice that surrounds her when her best friend’s mother is brutally arrested in front of her. In the days following, she unexpectedly discovers a peaceful resistance movement. Tessa is determined to join this small band of resisters working to unite the masses to fight for justice and equality for all Newtopians. 

Click Here to Pre-Order on Amazon Today!