Enduring the Waves – 2024 NEST Contest Finalist (5th Place) in Women’s Fiction!
Kelly Lynch navigates the seas of friendship and the storms of grief as she ebbs and flows along a journey of self-discovery.
As Waterville High School’s newest English teacher, Kelly Lynch befriends fellow educator and James Joyce enthusiast Shannon Moran. While Kelly grapples with deep scars from her past, she struggles to balance her active life as a teacher and her stagnant marriage to shiftless alcoholic Wayne Coopersmith. Shannon’s encouragement resurrects Kelly’s passion for writing, while Kelly inspires Shannon to pursue her lifelong dream of studying in Dublin, Ireland. After two devastating events fracture Kelly’s life, she searches for meaning in her grief by following a trail of mysterious clues that guide her from the New Jersey shore to Dublin. Sparks ignite her long-dormant creativity and a raging inferno in her heart while on the Emerald Isle as two unsuspecting Dubliners combine forces to hearten Kelly’s awakening. She returns home to the Jersey Shore having endured the waves spurred by her past, present, and future and ready to pursue her true calling. Traditionally Published by Wild Rose Press, November 2023.
About Time: A Coming-of-Age Anthology
Jill Ocone, Guest Editor
“About Time: A Coming-of-Age Anthology” showcases poems from over thirty diverse and brilliantly talented writers from all over the world that explore the essence of time and all of its facets. A meshing and a melding of the past, the present, the future, let the words from these poets remind you about growing up and withering away, the natural cycle of life, healing and learning, growing yet regressing, wavering from what was to what is to what might be, and more. Published by Red Penguin Books, February 2024.
Jill Ocone 