Books

DEREK KNOWS SPOOKY WHEN HE SEES IT – Derek Hyde Book 1

Derek Hyde isn’t tingling with undiluted joy that the spookiest old mansion in town is about to become the Hyde Funeral Home & Used Coffin Outlet. Especially since he has to live there with his mortician parents, Jack and Formalda.

Of course, being driven in the family hearse to his first day at middle school doesn’t exactly add whipped cream to his broccoli.

As if things couldn’t get more horrific, an evil classmate named Nussbaum attacks him in the cafeteria with a plate of beef stroganoff. Seems this kid loved living in the old mansion himself, but got yanked out after accidentally blowing up his own mom and dad. With his chemistry set. Now his dead parents are stuck as ghosts and Nussbaum is a foster kid stuck on revenge, vowing to get even with Derek’s family for taking over his haunted home.

Derek desperately craves a nice place to live, but a couple of minor details stand in his way—just some blood-curdling apparitions that scare the pants off him and a classmate bent on landing him in his parents’ embalming room. As a client.

DEREK HYDE KNOWS SPOOKY WHEN HE SEES IT is a tongue-in-cheek ghost story (think THE ADDAMS FAMILY meets GHOSTBUSTERS) that will appeal to Middle Grade readers who enjoy the creepiness and humor of PARANORMAN and Lauren Magaziner’s THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN WITCHES.

DEREK’S SPOOKY SCAVENGER HUNT – Derek Hyde Book 2

Spookaphobic Derek Hyde has a problem: He has to live in the haunted Hyde Funeral Home & Body Parts shop with his foster sister Prudence and his adoptive mortician parents, Jack and Formalda. What’s worse, Derek really misses his birth parents-who supposedly died. Turns out, they’re not so dead.

Formalda’s psychic Aunt, Claire Voyent, confirms that Derek’s birth parents are alive, but kidnapped-and in great danger. Against Jack and Formalda’s wishes, she helps Derek and Prudence run off to an airstrip to get help from an eccentric pilot named Up-Chuck Charlie. Charlie agrees to fly the kids to Mosquito Heaven where-according to Claire Voyant-Derek’s parents are being kept in a swampy bayou as zombies, drugged by a voodoo witch doctor.

After surviving a terrifying plane crash in the swamp, the kids rush to save Derek’s parents from the crafty witch doctor. Too late, they discover that an evil villain, D. K. Rotzalot, has whisked his captives away to a pirate ghost ship.

Derek is desperate to rescue his parents, but first he has to find his inner hero-and somehow match Prudence’s courage and spunky attitude. It’s either that, or live a wretched life of regret and woulda-coulda-shoulda.

DEREK AND THE DEAD-END MAZE – Derek Hyde Book 3 (COMING SOON FROM PEN IT PUBLICATIONS!)

Derek is at his wit’s end. To save his kidnapped parents, he and his partner-in-crime Prudence have to sail to Brazil on a magic ghost ship manned by a mangy crew of long-dead pirates. And Derek hates ghosts.

What’s worse, a psychic has predicted they’ll have to go through a complicated series of spooky dead-end mazes in Rio to find the evil kidnapper, D. K. Rotzalot.

If only they can get to Derek’s parents before it’s too late!

THE AUDACIOUS ADVENTURES OF DRIPPY THE DRAGON

Drippy just flunked Flame Throwing 101. Now he’s running away from home. Enough with the teasing and bullying—all because he can’t shoot fire like the other dragons, only water. Gallons and gallons of it. Allergy or curse, he must find a cure.

Frantically galloping through the woods to avoid the Flying Dragon Search & Rescue team, Drippy stumbles across Leena the Lionhearted, a spunky young knight hanging precariously off the face of a cliff. By dangling his tail over the edge, Drippy saves her life—so she offers to join him in his quest to solve the mystery of his strange water affliction..

But when they stumble across angry villagers headed toward Drippy’s dragon clan with pitchforks and torches, Drippy realizes he must use his water-spewing talents to stop a war—or start arranging his parents’ funerals..

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Sometimes I Get My Shoes on Backwards (Funny Poems for Kids)

If you like laugh-out-loud funny, not to mention offbeat, quirky and slightly wacky, you NEED this book.

Get your copy of the funniest 5-star collection of rib-tickling poems and cartoons since Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends!

Grab your ticket to the wondrous world of the whimsically weird. In this illustrated collection of sidesplitting kid’s poems, you’ll find out why we’re throwing the pumpkin away, how we’re selling father’s moustache, when little sister got elephant ears, where little brother got glued, and what’s important about knee joints. What’s more, you’ll meet Cantankerous Stan, the Garbage Man; Hairy Carrie the Bearded Lady; The Wizard who looked like a Lizard; and the Grumbly Grump of Nottingham Dump!

This delightful collection of illustrated poems is surprising, inventive, kooky and—most of all—hilarious.

 Click here to add a copy to your Amazon shopping cart today!

Recipient of the Readers’ Favorite Five Stars Award and Winner of the 2015 Readers’ Favorite International Book Award Contest:

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Read all the five-star reviews at Amazon.com!

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 The Lady Who Lost Her Voice  (Currently Unpublished, looking for an agent or publisher)


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Ledger Demain and the Awesome Umbrella (A Work in Progress)

Winner of the #Pg70Pit pitchwar in July, 2016, code name “Smiles Returning to the Faces”


My brother, Ledger, doesn’t know I’m writing this, ‘cause  if he did, he’d probably stop me.

It’s not that he’s humble or anything (that’s for sure!), it’s just that he gets so embarrassed. Like he always got embarrassed by our dad’s weird inventions, and then because our dad’s bookstore Walden Pondering was going under so he almost had to declare bankruptcy.  But I think that’s dumb. We did save the bookstore after all. Well, actually, Ledger did most of the saving.

It all started when our Granddad Dexter showed up, all excited to tell us about his Sunsoakers, these plants he was developing that grow batteries.

See, he wanted to do something really useful to fight global warming (and make a billion dollars!), but some bad guys blew up his lab and almost killed him.

So he decided to hide out at Camp Eureka (that’s an inventor’s camp for kids), pretending to be a camp counselor while he finished his project in secret. And he offered to take us with him for the summer.  (Yay!)

But first we had to get there. That was when… [-more-]

1 Response

  1. Oops, It seems when I moved to this page the prvious notes disappeared or were forwarded to you. Don’t know which. (Let me know if you got it as that was the main “stuff”) LOVE the drawings (maybe center them?) and the samples of writing. I can see why people love to read your stuff.. almost EVERY sentence has a joke, a nuance, a funny visual.. REALLY good work.

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