When two men disappear from twelve-year-old Helena Oakwood’s 1920’s Texas town, legends of a local river monster resurface. Dreaming of becoming a naturalist, Helena sets out to discover a new species. With her nose to the magnifying glass, she investigates tracks and interviews witnesses still shaking in their boots.

But when Daddy and her little brother become the next to disappear, Helena’s mission shifts from monster hunt to manhunt. A moonlit rescue ride becomes a fight to save her own life as she comes face to face with the truth behind the disappearances and the legend. It’s up to Helena to reunite her family and expose secrets that will change her town, and science, forever.

•The Summer of Moons & Monsters is a 57,000-word middle grade historical fiction adventure for fans of the spooky monster hunt in Where the River Takes Us by Lesley Parr and the fight for family and literary tone of Echo Mountain by Lauren Wolk. Readers of Light Comes to Shadow Mountain by Toni Buzzeo will enjoy the STEM elements.

•Winner of the Writer’s League of Texas Manuscript Award

Check out my mood board and one minute manuscript trailer below!

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Work in Progress Alert!

•Treasure Island meets The Little Mermaid with a Texas twist. When the orphaned daughter of a privateer is tricked into guiding two men into a fabled swampland in search of treasure, she meets a mysterious stranger who straddles the realms of land and water, and uncovers secrets worth more than their weight in gold.

•Finalist in the Writer’s League of Texas’s Manuscript Contest

Up next…

• A beastly tale set during the east Texas oil boom
• Something sweet from the Texas Hill Country