A poem.

I'm not in love with Nick. I'm not. Do I like Nick? Of course! He's Sam's boyfriend. Why wouldn't I like my best friend's boyfriend? Do I like him in an inappropriate way? Ugh. No! Stop. That would make me a horrible friend. Oh god. That would make me a horrible friend.

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.

Twenty-two year old Grace McCaffrey is humiliated when she can't find a job after graduating college and has to move back in with her parents. She always assumed she'd do something big with her life-create change or do something that matters-not work at the Banner Market as a cashier. Soon, Grace gets roped into being a chaperone for a high school backpacking trip with her ex-boyfriend, Miles Dalby. However, she quickly learns these students are part of a mentorship program for troubled youth. As she tries to get them to open up, Grace starts to doubt herself. How can she make a difference in the world if she can't even help these students? Or is her mom right and sometimes it's the little things that can make all the difference?

This story is about a horrifying lab experiment and the consequences of it. It is a love story. It is tragic story. It is warning story. It comes with a happy ending. Hope you Enjoy!

Iris and her two friends Runa and Lee are road tripping around America. Half way through Wyoming they take a wrong turn that will change their lives forever.

TB&ME is a collaborative blogging project by patients being treated for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in locations all around the world by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). They are writing about their experiences of living with MDR-TB and the treatment that they receive. This treatment can often involve taking upwards of 20 pills a day for 24 months and suffering many painful side effects from the toxic drugs. TB&ME has been launched because MDR-TB is a neglected disease. Very little money has been put into the research and development of diagnostics or new, improved treatment and people who are infected by the disease have no option but to take drugs which are painful and leave them feeling weak every day for a very long time. TB&ME gives MDR-TB patients an opportunity to tell the world about the issues which affect their lives, about how treatment and services could be improved and how it feels to have this disease. It also provides an opportunity for patients to tell the world that MDR-TB exists in their own words, that it is a global problem and to share their experiences with others who might be in the same position.

No one would describe Gina Lawrence as a sweet and blushing girl-next-door. But even Gina, so worldly and street-wise, had to admit God's Island went way beyond anything she could have imagined. It existed at a time long before the dawning of Club Med and the free-loving hippie anything goes movement--a time when global tensions had reached breaking point. Amid terrifying nuclear brinkmanship, Sam Godsteen's Island promised Club Med and more-much more. And like all forbidden fruit, it was bound to end. Gina thought she'd found heaven on earth. Even when things started to fall apart she tried to ignore the signs. She'd drawn about herself a cocoon of indulgence-a personal paradise on a tropical island- where only a select few would share a wild ride of emotion-filled excitement. A deceptive place, devoid of law and social structure, that would quickly and violently transform, leaving only a vast ocean in which to run and hide. Sheer survival quickly replaces her blinkered fool's paradise, culminating in a hellish ordeal of death and deprivation, leaving her little choice. Gina must kill or be killed. God's Island to Devil's Island in the blink of an eye.

A tale in which a thief with a double life grudgingly becomes a hero. ➳ Liana Mason has a life anyone would envy. Nobody suspects that the once orphaned girl grew up to be the city's notorious vigilante. She has been fine walking on the edge of morality for much of her life, but when an assassin arrives in her city she's forced to play a role she never imagined she'd choose: hero. A Robin Hood retelling. Trigger Warning: This contains themes that may be triggering for some readers (violence, sexual assault, etc). Cover designed by Ray Gardener

The ocean of black gowns twisting and twirling with the blurry faced people moving them surrounded me. Just a lone human standing in the middle of a corrupt dance. But then I saw it just a glimpse of color. That color was red. Terrible, Extraordinary red. or so I thought.