❝In which a celebrity dials a random number in hope of finding one last thing to make him smile before he commits suicide at the end of the month.❞ "I'm going to commit suicide in one months time." "I think you have the wrong number." "It can't be the wrong number Princess. I picked a random number from the catalog." "Why on earth would you do that?" "Because you, sweetheart, are now my own personal suicide helpline. Your job is to make the last month of my life worth living." ______________________

Love & Monsters is a story I worked on when I took my first novel writing class at UCLA. Since I lost my sister to suicide, I've been fascinated with exploring mental illness and providing any insight I can to eradicate the stigma. Love & Monsters follows Heather Bateman, a girl who has suffered from schizophrenia all her life but has only recently been diagnosed. She tries to socially recover from a very public mental breakdown with the help of her best friend Wren and a strange new boy who calls himself Nex.

"Give me ten days, and I can give you ten reasons not to die." Evan paused. "And if I can't change your mind by then, you can go jump off that cliff."

She was invincible and unfixable. She was the woman you'd been warned about since you could walk. She was the smile that robbed a million dollars, and twice as many hearts. {Written 2013.}

She was a cynic, he wasn't.