Tattered Innocence
Ann Lee Miller earned a BA in creative writing from Ashland (OH) University and writes full-time in Phoenix, but left her heart in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, where she grew up. She loves speaking to young adults and guest lectures on writing at several Arizona colleges. When she isn't writing or muddling through some crisis--real or imagined--you'll find her hiking in the Superstition Mountains with her husband, meddling in her kids' lives or at AnnLeeMiller.com. Tattered Innocence debuts in February, 2013. Ann says: Every year in elementary school the teachers wrote, "daydreams too much," on my report card. Like Ty Pennington, no doubt, put his, "can't sit still," to good use on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, I cashed in my bad behavior writing novels. However, sometimes the daydreaming didn't work out so well in real life. When I was twelve, my job was checking the depth when we sailed near shallows. I jabbed a pole at the bay floor and yelled out how many feet of water we had by reading the notches on the stick. One day the pole stuck in bottom, and the next thing I knew, I clung to the pole, suspended a couple feet above the water, and my family sailed away. Of course, I didn't waste all my hollering about mud and barracuda and cold water as I sunk into the seaweed waiting for Dad to lumber the motor-less, forty-foot hulk back around to fetch me--I wrote it into one of my books.