Fifteen-year-old Alex and his learning-disabled friends barely survived the events of Spinner, but their nightmare has only just begun. Alex's wheelchair has never stopped him from doing what he wants, but his supernatural power to heal every human ailment known to science has put him in the crosshairs of a dangerous doomsday cult that will stop at nothing to capture him and his long-lost twin, Andy, who can shift illness from one person to another. When the boys combine their "gifts," they unleash the power to control life and death. Now Alex, Andy, and the others have been kidnapped by the U.S. military. On a creepy Air Force base in the remote Nevada desert, they must decide who to trust and who to fear while uncovering secrets this base wants to hide from the world. Who is the young boy with unusual abilities who's treated like a soldier? What is hidden in an ultra-secret hangar that no one can access? And what unnatural experiments are conducted in that closed-off laboratory? As Alex unravels these mysteries, he strives to bond with his twin, but Andy is distant and detached, trusting no one. He's also more attracted to the dangerous power they wield than Alex would like. When misplaced faith in science ignites a hidden lust for supremacy, rescue can only come from the most unlikely source, and Alex must confront a terrible truth. The Healer Chronicles continue...

As a high school special education teacher, I primarily taught kids of color, all of whom had disabilities of one sort or another, from the learning disabled to those with physical limitations to those on the autism spectrum. And yet, in the books and stories we read in class, none of the characters had any disability and most were Caucasian.

In my teen horror/sci-fi series, The Healer Chronicles, I highlight those kids I taught for many years – those with disabilities. They tend to be the most overlooked of all high schoolers because it is “assumed” by adults that they will never amount to much in life. Kids with physical or learning disabilities are no different from those without them – they can learn and achieve, just not in the same one-size-fits-all fashion school systems like to employ. I know what I’m talking about because I have a disability of my own – hearing loss. I’ve lived with a severe sensorineural hearing impairment my entire life and did not even have access to hearing aids until I was in college.

I also didn’t know a single youth like me until after graduate school. I was one of a kind growing up, and that can be isolating. However, my isolated childhood gave me true empathy for every youngster who was “different,” and likely directed me to seek out such kids and work with them. After graduate school, I joined the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, wherein adult males mentor kids with no father in the home. I was matched to a fourteen-year-old boy with hearing loss, and the experience was revelatory. Even as an adult, I felt an almost palpable relief to finally know someone who’d grown up with hearing loss as I had. Imagine what it’s like for kids like me to see themselves in books they read, to understand that they aren’t alone or broken or crippled, to see others like them being the heroes for a change. We all need to understand that being different is not wrong. In fact, being apart from the norm is often a net positive, and it’s a major theme throughout my writing.

We spend way too much time in this country focusing on what we perceive to be the weaknesses in others. The teen characters in Shifter prove that our strengths always outweigh our weaknesses, and our differentness should be celebrated, not hidden away. If more adults would focus on the natural talents and gifts of kids instead of always trying to make everyone “fit in,” then all children would have a real chance to soar.

No matter what we look like or how much money we have or how smart we are; no matter our race, gender, or orientation; no matter our abilities or disabilities – at the end of every day we’re all the same. We’re all human. We’re human first, and everything else second.

As a writer of teen lit, my goal is to empower every kid, not just the ones most Americans “look like.”

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