BOOKS

Book One – Friend for Life (spring 2020; sketches are delayed)

Free script e-book with the purchase of the novel. Free educational coloring e-book about the Everglades. When I have time to write it, I will also give purchasers, free writing summaries to help you write your own stories. Please sign up for updates and like us on FB to enter contests and giveaways. The first contest will be sometime in the summer of 2020–I hope.

Taglines

What you resist might pursue you—for dinner.

Logline:

Stranded in the Everglades, two former friends enlist a trio of quirky animals to help them find their way home and rediscover their friendship, all the while facing dangers lurking in every corner.

Short Synopsis:

The last thing twelve-year-old OCEAN RIVER wanted to do was to spend time on an Everglades airboat tour with ELLEN HANSEN, a former best friend. When they get lost after their airboat crashes, they receive animal superpowers from a Seminole Indian ghost. With this newfound talent, they recruit GUMBO, a cowardly teenage alligator destined but reluctant to be the next alligator king, BIX, a naïve soft-shelled turtle, and ASHA, a wise old wood stork. They join forces in this heartfelt adventure set in the fragile ecosystems of the Florida Everglades, where readers encounter nature’s beauty as well as its teeth and claws. In this wondrous journey, they discover that if they ever hope to find their way home, they have to forgive past hurts and peacefully work together as a team.

Synopsis:

Twelve-year-old OCEAN RIVER is a goofy kid. He’s never met a problem he couldn’t solve with a joke or a silly dance. When his best friend, ELLEN HANSEN, loses her father, life just got a lot more serious, and Ocean’s immature antics at the funeral threaten to ruin their friendship forever.

Meanwhile, just a few miles away, in the swampy jungle of the Everglades, another young boy named GUMBO struggles with his born destiny—this boy just happens to be an alligator, the heir to the great gator kingdom. Not only is Gumbo reluctant to be a leader, but his father, the king, recently ordered him to kill several pythons by the next day. The problem is Gumbo’s a pacifist. And a vegan. And oh, deathly afraid of snakes.

Gumbo and his best friends: BIX, a naïve, cheerful soft-shelled turtle, and their guru, ASHA, a wise old wood stork who’s teaching Gumbo yoga, reluctantly set off on their mission while the humans are on a mission of their own: a family vacation to the Everglades, Ellen’s belated birthday gift, which they hope might save Ocean and Ellen’s friendship. But when a tour boat crash leaves the kids lost and alone in the gator-infested swamp, they receive animal superpowers from a legendary Seminole Indian ghost, and now they can talk to animals, including Gumbo, and it seems like getting lost together was just what they needed.

Except, of course, for the giant mutant python who has serious plans for dinner . . . and revenge.

In this funny and heartwarming fantasy, set in the fragile ecosystems of the Everglades, Ocean and Ellen and their new animal friends learn how to let go of the past and trust each other in the present, where forgiveness and empathy—even for killer pythons—might just save the day.

Book Cover and Chapter Illustrations:

Tim Shinn http://www.pitchhouse.net/tim.html

Chapter Illustrations Layout Designer:

Anton Jaspard https://www.antonjaspard.com/

Script E-book Storyboard Illustrations:

Tim Shinn http://www.pitchhouse.net/tim.html

Joe Badon http://joebadon.blogspot.com/

Frankie B. Washington http://www.frankiebwashington.com/

Script E-book Graphic Novel Illustrations:

Giles Crawford https://www.behance.net/redwhiteblack