Teaser from “Stand Alone”

I haven’t blogged anything since last Teaser Tuesday! I have been busy with Camp Nano, and life has been very disrupted by my son’s football schedule (which is pretty much 2.5 hours every day of the week…) I was toying with whether to skip the teaser this week, and jump into my NaNo novel (now over 33,000 words), but I decided to take just a couple minutes anyway.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!

“Stand Alone” is nearing publication date, hopefully next week. It is a young adult novel, and the description is below. Be sure to also watch the trailer! No link to Amazon yet, as it is still pre-release, but it is listed on Goodreads so you can add it to your “to read” shelf.

Here is my teaser:

She covered her face with both hands, sobs racking her body, and just let it all go. The dam had burst. There was no more keeping the water contained. Afternoon gave way to evening. The sobs stopped. The tears stopped. The pain did not. Her shirt was soaked in tears, snot, and drool. She didn’t care.
P.D. Workman, Stand Alone

Is Justine crazy?

Everyone thinks so.

Her mother. The kids at school, and the teachers and administrators too. Even the police who pick her up from her night rambles. Maybe them most of all. Justine’s therapist says she is ‘troubled’, but it means the same thing. He thinks that her vivid, reoccurring nightmares and atrocious behavior point to some trauma in her past; but Em, Justine’s mother, can’t explain it.Justine used to have Christian, her best friend and skateboard partner. He was the only one who accepted her. Maybe because skating is the only time that Justine is really free to be herself.

Now that Christian is gone… Justine keeps thinking things can’t get any worse.Even as she sees her life spinning further and further out of control, Justine can’t give up her sense of who she is—someone far different than the loving daughter Em expects her to be—to just fit in and be happy. She is sure that Em secretly holds the key to who Justine really is. But if she does, Em isn’t talking.