The Innocence Treatment

I’d like to say ‘I don’t remember the last time I wrote a blog post.’  Unfortunately the website reminds me — over two years.  (Thanks for nothing website!)   There have been good reasons for this ( I’ve been spending my writing time writing fiction – yay!)  And bad reasons for this (I had nothing much to announce.  Boo!)  Until now.

I’m thrilled to announce that Roaring Brook Press will  be publishing my latest novel, The Innocence Treatment.   The Innocence Treatment is a YA suspense novel centered around Lauren Fielding.  At the start of the novel Lauren is a sixteen-year-old high school student with a cognitive disability – the inability to discriminate truth from lies.  She believes anything her friends tell her, and she believes that everyone is her friend.  This leaves her happy, but at constant risk of victimization.  A cutting edge medical treatment helps Lauren, but after the treatment her mental condition soon veers into paranoia.  Or does it?  I can say no more.

Except this:  The Innocent Treatment is a thriller set in a near future United States, where climate change and economic unrest have led to a new political reality of surveillance and corporate control.  Or have they?  I can say no more.

Except this:  The Innocent Treatment is a psychological thriller told through journal entries, psychiatric transcripts, transcribed video clips and more.  Or is it?  (Well, yes.  It is.  I don’t think we need suspense around that…)

A few things that are certain:

• I’m super thrilled to be working with Kate Jacobs (senior editor at Roaring Brook (MacMillan)) on this project. Thanks Kate!
• I’m super grateful to my agent, Lindsay Ribar, for all the work she put into finding The Innocence Treatment a good home. Thanks Lindsay!
• I’m also super grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts for supporting my work on The Innocence Treatment with an emerging writers grant.  Thanks Government of Canada!   (It’s not strictly relevant to this post, but I believe it’s wrong not to include an image Canadian Prime Minister, Justin  Trudeau, given even the most flimsy of excuses.)  Yay Canada!

(And just for the record, I’m not using a picture of Justin Trudeau just in hopes that  it will make more people look at my website.  Okay.  I kind of am.  Let’s see if it works.)

Anyway, I promise to blog more often.  For a while anyway.  Let’s be realistic.