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Fiction by Denise Jaden

OUTCAST

She’s not crazy.

Kass Bateman may be a lot of things, but she swears she’s not crazy—even when she wakes up strapped to a wheelchair in a psychiatric hospital and can’t remember how she got there.

When Kass’s family members go missing one by one, she enlists the smartest guy she knows to help find them. Unfortunately for her, underneath his brains and indifference are some dark secrets and a whole lot of distracting sexy.

Can Kass keep her head together long enough to rescue her family members from their captors—the truly dangerous and crazy ones?

Gritty, steamy, and rife with secrecy, Outcast is the first book in a new upper YA series for fans of Gayle Forman and Rainbow Rowell.

Grab your copy of Outcast today!

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Check out the rest of the Living Out Loud Series here.

Avalanche

His past no longer matters. Her future must wait. In the mountaavalanchecoverins there’s only right now.

Ellis Cooper heads up to the Mount Laurel Ski Instructor Training Program hoping to reinvent herself, but her plan goes awry when she’s paired up with a surprise
trainee–Dylan, the scariest guy from her school–the guy who stalks her almost everywhere. What Ellis doesn’t realize is Dylan has hopes of his own about his time at Mount Laurel: he hopes that if everyone leaves him alone, he’ll be able to escape his past and rekindle his love of the outdoors.

When Ellis and Dylan’s resort world and all of their hopes crash–literally–around them, they’ll need to depend on each other in order to survive.

“An avalanche of emotions…Denise Jaden tackles heavy hitting emotions head on in her novels and this newest installment told in alternate POV’s of Ellis and Dylan is no different.” – Kitty Keswick, author of Freaksville

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A Christmas Kerril

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In this modern take on a holiday classic, high school junior, Kerril, faces her past, present, and future to be reminded of the good in others, and in herself.

Haunted by the memory of the worst of her divorced parents’ public Christmas blowouts, Kerril, will do almost anything to avoid the upcoming tinsel-filled season. Unfortunately, a teacher with a grudge casts Kerril as the lead in the school’s holiday production. To add to the misery, she will star alongside ultra-awkward Adam as her love interest.

Wanting to ditch the play, Adam, her parents, and Christmas altogether, Kerril accepts an invitation to take off to a cabin with her ultimate dream crush, Perry – only Perry may not be the guy she hoped he was, and it’s not until she’s left Adam behind to fend for himself onstage that she realizes he might just be the guy of her dreams.

“Denise Jaden’s talent for creating believable and compelling characters shines in A CHRISTMAS KERRIL. I stayed up way too late reading this contemporary YA take on the classic Christmas story, completely caught up in the characters’ challenges, secrets, friendships, and romances. Highly recommended!”
-Shari Green, author of Following Chelsea.

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Check out the Reader/Discussion Guide for A Christmas Kerril.

Foreign Exchange

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Jamie Monroe has always played it safe. That is, until her live-for-the-moment best friend, Tristan, jets off to Italy on a student exchange program. Left alone with her part-time mother and her disabled brother, Jamie discovers that she is quite capable of taking her own risks, starting with her best friend’s hotter-than-hot older brother, Sawyer. Sawyer and Tristan have been neighbors for years, but as Jamie grows closer to the family she thought she knew, she discovers some pretty big secrets.As she sinks deeper into their web of pretense, she suspects that her best friend may not be on a safe exchange program at all. Jamie sets off to Europe on a class trip with plans to meet up with Tristan, but when Tristan stops all communication, suddenly no one seems trustworthy, least of all the one person she was starting to trust—Sawyer.

“Foreign Exchange is heart pounding and suspenseful…the teenage dream of escaping the boredom of suburbia by travelling Europe and spending quality time with a hot guy shifts into a dangerous nightmare.”
-D.R. Graham, author of Rank and the Noir et Bleu MC series.

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Check out the Reader/Discussion Guide for Foreign Exchange.

Never Enough

Loann’s always wanted to bNeverenoughfinale popular and pretty like her sister, Claire. So when Claire’s ex-boyfriend starts flirting with her, Loann is willing to do whatever it takes to feel specialeven if that means betraying her sister. But as Loann slips inside Claire’s world, she discovers that everything is not as it seems. Claire’s quest for perfection is all-consuming, and comes at a dangerous price. As Claire increasingly withdraws from friends and family, Loann struggles to understand her and make amends. Can she heal their relationship—and her sister—before it’s too late?

“A beautiful story…heartbreaking and raw.”
– Tara Kelly, author of the award-winning YA novel Harmonic Feedback

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Check out the Reader/Discussion Guide for Never Enough.

 Losing Faith

A terrible secret. A terrible fate.

When Brie’s sister, Faith, dies suddenly, Brie’s world falls apart. As she goes through the bizarre anLosingFaithfinalHRd devastating process of mourning the sister she never understood and barely even liked, everything in her life seems to spiral farther and farther off course. Her parents are a mess, her friends don’t know how to treat her, and her perfect boyfriend suddenly seems anything but. As Brie settles into her new normal, she encounters more questions than closure: Certain facts about the way Faith died just don’t line up. Brie soon uncovers a dark and twisted secret about Faith’s final night…a secret that puts her own life in danger.

“A remarkable debut!”
-CM Magazine

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Check out the Reader/Discussion Guide for Losing Faith

 

 

Nonfiction For Writers:

Story Sparks: Finding Your Best Story Ideas and Turning Them into Compelling Fiction

Anyone who has been hamster-wheeling a story idea for years or has hundreds of pages exploring various approaches on their hard drive knows there must be a better way. There is. Successful young adult novelist Denise Jaden shows exactly how to create the captivating stories that prevent dispiriting wasted time. Busting the “visitation from the muses” myth, she shows that inspiration is a skill that can be learned by understanding how story ideas work (or don’t), fertilizing the ground for fresh and sound ideas, and moving swiftly through stuck points. Practical and inspiring, Jaden’s approach celebrates the imaginative sparks that make innovations of all kinds possible while pinpointing the precise tools writers need to fan their unique creative flames.

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Fast Fiction: A Guide to Outlining and Writing a First-Draft Novel in Thirty Days

Whether readers have a great idea for a novel, but can’t get started, or have been working on one for five years, one tactic that helps thousands of would-be novelists move past procrastination to a finished draft is a deadline. In this case, a very short one: 30 days. Fast Fiction is inspired and informed by the author’s yearly participation in NaNoWriMo, a web-based 30-day writing challenge each November with over 256,000 FastFiction_cvr_hiresparticipants in 2011, over 35,000 of whom completed the program’s stated goal of a 50,000-word novel. Fast Fiction is a quick, inspirational, step-by-step and day-by-day guide to writing a structurally sound and engaging first draft in the shortest amount of time possible. It provides a great starting point for writers as they ditch time-wasters, detour frustration, and overcome self-doubt, and it helps them decide where to go with their story and how to get there quickly, with results. Told in the empathetic and accessible voice of an author who can provide an insider’s look at her own craft and publishing experiences, Fast Fiction provides readers with their own writing coach as they embark on a quick, fun, and challenging 30 days to a first draft.

Fast Draft Printables

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Writing With A Heavy Heart: Using Grief and Loss to Stretch Your Fiction

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In her first non-fiction book, Denise Jaden explores the stages and outlets of grief and how to implement them into your fiction to create more interesting characters and a more engaging plot. Some topics of this book include: grieving before the loss, spiritual matters, and how grief affects different ages, personality types and gender.

“Jaden’s Writing With A Heavy Heart is a must-have for any writer’s craft shelf. The combination of clear guidance and practical exercises allow writers to take their manuscripts to a deeper level.” – Eileen Cook Author of With Malice

Grief Printables

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