Kicking Eternity (36 page)

I’m grateful to my daughter Annie whose dream of loving orphans in Peru inspired Raine’s passion. And my son Luke, like Drew, when he sings makes me feel like only God and I are in the room.

Thanks to Jackie Jessup, my proofreader and cheerleader who took days off work to traipse around New Smyrna Beach quizzing people for info with her temporarily-struck-shy writer friend.
And for
keeping me sober at high school keg parties and out of all the trouble I would have wandered into.

A heart-felt thank you goes to the hundreds of people who made me a summer camp expert: the folks at Our Lady of The Hills Camp in Hendersonville, North Carolina, the “happy” in my childhood; Camp Bethany in Loudenville, Ohio; Camp Shipshewana in Shipshewana, Indiana; and ABC Camp in Patagonia, Arizona.

God receives my deepest appreciation for creating me with a purpose—to write—and for causing my heart to sing when I write.

Thank you for reading
Kicking Eternity
, walking into my imaginary world and my heart.

Ann Lee Miller earned a BA in creative writing from Ashland (OH) University and writes full-time in Phoenix, but left her heart in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, where she grew up. She loves speaking to young adults and guest lectures on writing at several Arizona colleges. When she isn’t writing or muddling through some crisis—real or imagined—you’ll find her hiking in the Superstition Mountains with her husband or meddling in her kids’ lives.

Other titles from Ann Lee Miller

The Art of My Life

Release Date: September 1, 2012

Cal walked out of jail and into a second chance at winning Aly with his grandma’s beater sailboat and a reclaimed dream of sailing charters.

Aly has the business smarts, strings to a startup loan, and heart he never should have broken. He’s got squat. Unless you count enough original art to stock a monster rummage sale and an affection for weed.

But he’d only ever loved Aly. That had to count for something. Aly needed a guy who owned yard tools, tires worth rotating, and a voter’s registration card. He’d
be
that guy or die trying.

For anyone who’s ever struggled to measure up. And failed.

Avra’s God

Release Date: December 1, 2012

In the tradition of
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
, four friends navigate college and the drama churned up by their Florida beach band to cement friendship and more.

Avra wants love, but drummer Cisco—self-medicating from his parents’ divorce with sex and intoxicants—is a poor choice. Cisco hungers for fresh-baked cookies and the scent of family he finds at Avra’s.

Kallie shares her classically trained singing voice only with lead vocalist Jesse and fights to keep her heart safe. Jesse feeds on fame and hides more than insecurity beneath his guitar.

The friends surf ego, betrayal, and ambition and head for wipeout.  But somehow, when they’re not looking, Avra’s God changes them all.

Tattered Innocence

Release Date: March 1, 2013

On the verge of bagging the two things he wants most—a sailing charter business and marrying old money—Jake Murray’s fiancée/sole crew member dumps him. Salvation comes in the form of dyslexic, basketball toting Rachel Martin, the only one to apply for the first mate position he slapped on craigslist.

Rachel, on a dead run from an affair with a married man, snags the job on Jake’s boat before she can change her mind. Her salvation is shoving ocean between her and temptation and, just maybe, between her and an oil slick of self-disgust.

The many-layered
story
weaves together disparate strands into a seamless cord.
Mother and daughter look eerily alike—down to their lusts. Their symbiotic bond, forged in the blood of childbirth on the kitchen floor and cemented by their secrets, must be cracked open. A son must go home. Sin must be expunged.

Tattered Innocence
is for anyone who’s ever woken up sealed in a fifty-gallon
drum of their guilt.