Guest Blogger, Pamela Samuels Young, Spotlights her Latest Novel, Abuse of Discretion, Including #YA Version

Read My Review!

Mysteries 

     That 

          Matter






I’ve often been asked if I intentionally set out to write legal thrillers that tackle important social issues. I did not. As it turned out, my work as an employment lawyer naturally led me to interesting social topics that developed into a niche for writing mysteries that matter. 

YA Cover

My novels have focused on subjects such as race discrimination, sexual harassment in the workplace, child sex trafficking, and HIV and AIDS. With each book, I always try to entertain readers, but educate them as well. 

That’s definitely the case with my latest legal thriller, Abuse of Discretion. When a lawyer friend complained to me about having yet another teenage client charged with distributing child pornography as a result of sexting, I was stunned. He went on to explain that all over the country, teens who swap naked selfies are facing child pornography charges. Even worse, if convicted, these children must register as sex offenders.

I immediately started researching teen sexting. One study reports that 30% of teens have sent a naked selfie and 57% have been asked to send one. I was shocked to learn that children as young as thirteen or fourteen were facing child pornography charges. In some schools, dozens of teens were found to be trading naked selfies. 

Determined to shine a spotlight on this epidemic, I wrote Abuse of Discretion. In the book, 14-year-old Graylin is charged with possession of child pornography and quickly finds himself embroiled in a legal nightmare. 

Mothers and grandmothers who’ve read Abuse of Discretion constantly tell me it’s prompted a discussion about sexting with the children in their lives. I began hearing that so often that I decided to write #Abuse of Discretion—a young adult adaptation of the book—in an effort to reach teens directly.

It’s my hope that after reading Abuse of Discretion and #Abuse of Discretion, parents begin to monitor what their kids are doing on their computers and cell phones and kids become aware of the legal consequences of sexting.

I’m thrilled about Abuse of Discretion’s great reviews on Amazon (an overall rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars, with 92% of reviewers giving it 5 stars) and glad to have written yet another engaging mystery that matters. 

###

Pamela Samuels Young is an attorney and award-winning author of eight legal thrillers. Her most recent courtroom drama, Abuse of Discretion, tackles a troubling sexting case that gives readers a shocking look inside the juvenile justice system. Pamela is also the recipient of an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Fiction for her thriller Anybody’s Daughter. The former journalist received a bachelor’s degree from USC and earned graduate degrees from Northwestern University and UC Berkeley School of Law. She is a frequent speaker on the topics of child sex trafficking, online safety, fiction writing, and pursuing your passion. To read an excerpt of Pamela’s books or to invite her to a book club meeting or speaking engagement, visit her website at: www.pamelasamuelsyoung.com. 

Website URL:  www.pamelasamuelsyoung.com
Blog URL: http://letswritetoday.blogspot.com/
Facebook URL: www.facebook.com/pamelasamuelsyoung
Twitter: www.twitter.com/AuthorPSY
Instagram: www.instagram.com/AuthorPSY
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/authorpamelasamuelsyoung/
Skype: www.skype.com/pamelasamuelsyoung
YouTube.com/Pamelasamuelsyoung
Buy link for Abuse of Discretion: at Amazon


Note: Videos on Sexting pulled together by Young

April 29, 2018 (Sunday)

Brain Candy and Brunch Book Club

Private Book Club Meeting

Reading Selection: Anybody’s Daughter

Inglewood, CA

2:30 p.m.

May 10, 2018 (Thursday)

Literary Viewpoints with Fran Lewis

Author Interview

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/fran-lewis

7 a.m.

May 12, 2018 (Saturday)

Books and Brunch

Hosted by Delta Sigma Theta, Inc.

Los Angeles Alumnae Chapter

Los Angeles, CA

11 a.m. 

May 15, 2018 (Tuesday)

Destination Mystery

Author Interview

DestinationMystery.com

10 a.m.

May 19, 2018 (Saturday)

Pasadena Lit Fest

Writing Workshop

Pasadena Theatre District

1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

June 14-16, 2018 (Thursday-Saturday)

Romance Slam Jam

Kansas City, MO

Featured Author

Register at rsjconvention.com

July 27, 2018 (Friday)

Sisters with Books Book Club

Private Book Club Meeting

Reading Selection: Abuse of Discretion

Los Angeles, CA

7 p.m.

July 29, 2018 (Sunday)

Victorious Ladies Reading Book Club

Private Book Club Meeting

Reading Selection: Abuse of Discretion

Via Teleconference

Durham, NC

4 p.m.

August 26, 2018 (Sunday)

Diamond Divas Book Club

Private Book Club Meeting

Reading Selection: Anybody’s Daughter

Baton Rouge, LA

Via Skype

1 p.m.

October 26, 2018 (Friday)

National Black Book Festival

Featured Author

Visit NationalBlackBookFestival.com

Houston, TX

December 2, 2018 (Sunday)

A Sip and Read with Author Pamela Samuels Young

Discussion of Anybody’s Daughter and Child Sex Trafficking

Hosted by The Links, Inc.

Beverly Hills West Chapter

Los Angeles, CA

2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

July 11-14, 2019 (Thursday-Sunday)

Essence in Romance

Midwest National Book Conference

Featured Author

Detroit, MI

The Five-Minute Cross - Poetry by Adolfo Caso

The Five-Minute Cross

By Adolph Caso

Sitting,

trance-like,

In my hospital chair,

I glance at the architecture outside

Enveloped by the blue color of the sky,

Creating and recreating itself

Into forms which are never the same,

Just like two snow-flakes falling to the ground.

The door bell rings;

My nurse walks toward me,

Her hand stretched

To welcome me into her world--

Her belly bulging.

“How many months?”

Not giving her a chance to answer,

I extend my hand, as I always do,

Over the baby, yet to be born.

With this very humble hand,

I bless that baby reverently.

On placing her hand over mine,

Two individuals

Of two races in time

Become two human beings--

In one:

Together.

With the expectation

Of receiving news

On her delivery day,

I continue to glance through the prismatic window.

Once again,

My eyes follow

The contours of the gray buildings

In a mish-mash of sizes and shapes

Having no order or design;

They stand still,

In defiance of my very presence,

Suddenly, from the East,

Two thick lines of gray air

Begin to fill the sky above the buildings:

Bulkier to its extreme left,

One line extends itself east to west;

The other north to south.

Thick and solid to the left--

And lighter to the right,

They come together into an imposing cross.

After re-adjusting my sight,

The whole cross comes into full view:

Its left outline strong and thick,

Its right lines evanescent

As though I were watching

A Renaissance artist

Create that image on canvas;

I see its large and white frame

Inject itself into the solid blue of a receptive sky.

Phone in hand,

I call for my nurse to come back--

The digital clock registering 4:25,

I wait to see as time moves on.

Finally, just as the clock is reaching 4:30,

She rushes in with a flustered look on her face:

“Are you alright!”

Clutching her hand, I take her to the window.

“There, look: it is about to disappear.”

Her eyes fixed on the phenomenon cross,

She squeezes my hand

As the last part of the cross’ outline

Disappears into the deep blue sky.

It is exactly 4:30.

Her mouth open,

She turns toward me:

“Jesus is still with us,” she asserts,

And quickly leaves the room.

Sitting on my hospital chair,

I ask myself in disbelief:

“What has just happened?”

Adolfo, I call that a God Incident!

Notice that the picture shown for your nurse changed...Perhaps for her, Jesus is always attached to the Cross and easily visible... It is so wonderful to find images that remind us of the way Christ died on the Cross for each of us! But some of us ask...What?   Why?



The Answer is Simple...

What just happened, Adolfo?

I believe you were just told that

You are Loved...

And because you shared those five minutes...

You've also told all who read your poetry...

That we, also are loved!

Thank you, Adolfo

Thank You, Jesus

Thank You, God

Just Out! All The Beautiful Lies by Peter Swanson

The service was held at the First Parish Unitarian Universalist, a white wooden church with a high steeple that was on the Old Post Road. Harry, Alice, and Paul arrived early, and Harry and Alice spoke to the minister, a grey-haired woman over six feet tall, who went over what she planned on saying. Harry knew most of it already. It was going to be a short service; two hymns, a eulogy, a reading by Carl Ridley, Bill's cousin from Sanford. Alice had already met with the minister to go over some of the details of Bill's life, and the minister briefly recounted them now. Harry was glad that there was significant mention of his mother, and how devoted Bill had been to her. It was his only concern, worried that Alice had only seen Bill's life as beginning when she had come into it. But the words the minister planned on saying comprised all of Bill's life, including both his marriages, his son, his lifelong affair with books, even his infamous cooking. As Harry, Alice and the minister talked, a few early-arriving guests filtered slowly into the church...
It was a relief to sit, to hear the murmur of people behind him, and know that he didn't have to acknowledge them, at least not yet. He felt guilty that he wasn't saying anything at his father's funeral, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He didn't trust himself to speak in public, worried that he'd be overtaken by either anger or grief, or a combination of both. He even still worried about his lisp, long eradicated except in his mind, where he often heard the echoes of how he used to speak. There'd be a receiving line after the service, and he'd have to speak then, but just to people one-on-one. Still, the thought of it made his skin feel prickly, and his breathing shallow...
Harry turned back as the minister adjusted the microphone at the pulpit. He took a deep breath to prepare himself, but the service was relatively painless...She talked about his love of the coast of Maine. "Alice spoke to me about Bill's need to see the ocean every day. How it grounded him. He found his true and spiritual home here in Kennewick, and for that we should all be grateful."
Alice dipped her head next to Harry, and covered her face with her hands. He slid toward her and put an arm around her narrow shoulders. Behind him he could hear stifled crying.
After the eulogy, Carl Ridley walked gingerly to the pulpit, a trembling sheet of paper in his hand. Tears already streaked Carl's papery cheeks before he even spread out the sheet of paper in front of him. There was a long pause, Carl smoothed back his thinning hair, but then he was speaking, saying how Bill's office was deorated by two things: stacks and stacks of books, and one poem, tacked onto the wall. The poem was "If," by Rudyard Kipling...Harry had heard the poem before, or at least the line that went, "If you can meet triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same," but he'd forgotten that the poem was a message from a father to a son. Harry tensed his jaw. His aunt, from behind him, put a hand on his shoulder, making it worse. But then at the end of the recitation--"You'll be a man, my son!"--Paul leaned close to his ear and said, "Jesus, salt in the wound." and Harry quietly laughed, feeling better...

~~~

All The Beautiful Lies

By Peter Swanson

Harry had come home to Grey Lady, his home since he was first born, upon hearing his father had died. Leaving before graduation was not really a problem. He was worried more about going home, to having only Alice, his father's second wife, there, alone. He'd admitted to himself a long time ago, when he first met his father's bride, that she was beautiful and that he was attracted to her. Alice was closer to Harry's age than to his father's. But he'd been in college and rarely went home. Now that was impossible.

He had also noticed a stranger at the funeral, a young attractive girl he knew was not a long-term resident in his home town. But he was soon busy since his father had run a local bookstore and his one assistant would need help. Harry reluctantly accepted he would have to help out at least until they knew what would happen in the future.

Still, the primary issue for him was that he was not satisfied with what had really happened to his father. He had walked the area for years without incident. What could have happened to bring about an accidental death? Only later it was changed and being treated as a suspicious death... Who would kill his father?

Toward the end of the day, the bell
sounded, the front door opening to a
customer for just the fourth time that
day...Harry went to his post at the cash
register. The customer was the woman
from the funeral, with the short dark
hair. She was wearing the headband
again. Harry felt his cheeks flush at
the sight of her. She spotted him and
walked right over, almost too
purposefully...
"I was wondering if you're hiring...
~~~

Of course, the role of the second wife always comes to mind at a sudden death. Still I was surprised that the novel takes us back to the earlier life of Alice, as she moved to Kennebunk, at the age of 14. Thereafter, the story moves back and forth between now and then and follows Alice's life through to the present.

It was hard to understand this character and readers will begin to question her role, her intentions, and her mental health. Especially when she makes it clear that she would be willing to accept Harry into her bed now... Let's just say the present sometimes follows history... And, as the title predicts, there will be many lies spewed out...but not enough to allow us to be sure who the villain is!

Because before long, the woman from the funeral had stopped in the Bookstore, asking about a job. But, right away, Harry knew there was more to her story as well. Would she be truthful or would he have to search out her lies as well...

Learning about your father after his death can be a traumatic experience for a son and Harry was caught in the lives, the lies of those who had filled a place in his father's life. The story flows smoothly, sharing more and more, creating suspense that keeps you edgy, frustrated, as well as feelings of sympathy for Harry, the son of a man who he thought had lived in and through his books. And perhaps he did but Harry was seeing another death after his father's, was soon in the hospital as he chased a man who seemed to be part of what was happening... Until little by little, pieces fell together...

But readers will only begin to know as Harry puts everything together... and even as the book ended, the surprise of another death neatly closes the story... Wow! This one has to be read to discover the full impact of the intrigue that occurred over many years there in Kennebunk, Maine... Highly recommended!


GABixlerReviews

Peter Swanson is the author of The Kind Worth Killing, The Girl with a Clock for a Heart, and Her Every Fear. His stories and poems have appeared in The Atlantic, Measure, Mysterical-E, Soundings East, The Vocabula Review, and Yankee Magazine. His second novel, The Kind Worth Killing, won the New England Society Book Award for fiction. He has degrees in Creative Writing, Education, and Literature from Trinity College, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Emerson College. He lives with his wife in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Stabbing Pencey Boudreaux by Mary Lynn Plaisance

The small wedding shower went well, she guessed, because her son's wife, Jane, closed the louver doors and blocked the doorway into the larger living room, which meant that she had uninvited Pencey at the last minute in her own home; the ultimate shun to anyone in the South.

Being shunned in the South was the lowest of lows, but this wasn't the first time she was shunned by that one. She called her neighbor and lifelong friend since high school, Laura Lee, to come over and talk.
Laura Lee was always the casual dresser with her hair up. She loved her blue jeans and button down cotton shirts. When she walked over and opened the back door, Pencey immediately began telling her what happened at the wedding shower. Laura Lee listen well, but most importantly, she watched Pencey's face.
"Girl, you mean to tell me she blocked you from entering your own living room after you were invited?"
"Yes indeed. That was some nerve of her to do that to me after she tells me I'm invited. Who in their right mind does such a thing? I come home from the hair salon, dressed, and ready for the wedding shower, and I'm blocked out of my own living room." Pencey was so upset.
She picked up the last dish in the kitchen cabinet. Her kitchen was adjacent to the large living room near the pool and it was always spotless. Jane's friends cleaned up after the wedding shower, because Jane never did any housework at all, but she sure could while saying..."Put this here. Take that from there and place it here. Come on we need to get the party going. Work, work, work. Let's go gang." But she never did anything to help...
"Laura Lee, all I got to see in my living room was a swan theme. There were swans everywhere for her friends. On the coffee table, hanging from the middle of the chandelier, printed on the tablecloths, and I saw the center piece was a nice ice swan sculpture on a table they hauled into my living room with a lattice backdrop. I didn't see a cake, but I'm guessing it was on that same table
Pencey was still shaking her head...the nerve of Jane doing this to her, and then leaving her out of the room...
"She invited the girl's mama from another state, Laura Lee. I was introduced to her when I opened the louver doors to go into the living room. That's when I saw that the door was blocked with all the gifts, but Jane at least smiled at me and said that some lady in there was the mother of the bride. I'm beginning to think that she wanted her "best" friend's family to think this was  her home. She always did tell me that she had an image to keep up. I have no idea why. She's not a movie star."
"So, again, she just stabs you in the back. How many times are you going to this that shit, Pencey?"

~~~

Stabbing Pencey Boudreaux

By Mary Lynn Plaisance

After earlier reading two books by Plaisance, The Ghost of Mavis and Under the Healing Dome, it was interesting to read an earlier novel, Stabbing Pencey Boudreaux. This dramatic story is much more likely to come directly from life--have you ever had someone stab you in the back?! It can be a friend, someone with whom you work, or even somebody within your own family...

Jane was the wife of Pencey's only son. And with her actions, Pencey rarely saw him or her granddaughter. But Jane wasn't satisfied to just separate them, she would go further to embarrass or discredit her mother-in-law whenever she could. For instance, Jane invited Pencey to help host a bridal shower for her best friend, at Pencey's home. As always Pencey opened her home...But on the day of the shower and Pencey was out before it was to start, Jane arranged the room where it was to be held, so that Pencey was unable to enter once she came home and the party started... Pencey had realized that Jane seemed to want to have the attendees think that this was Jane's home rather than Pencey's. It was indeed a beautiful home, especially in comparison to her son's home, as he worked to take care of his family...

Fortunately, Pencey had three close friends with whom she could talk and each of them thought she should fight back! But how? Jane was so vindictive that she would lie to her son and Pencey would be forever cut off. Readers see how individuals can be so cruel to others as Pencey suffers through each stab of pain Jane placed in her back... 
As they meet to support Pencey, her friends share their own stories from which they had to fight and leave... Later, they learned that somebody else was listening to those personal secrets! But while Pencey drew back from vengeance, it soon became apparent that Jane was not only a narcissist who always wanted her way, she wanted even more and was willing to do what was necessary to get it! This narcissist was also a sociopath...

Even so, readers will be drawn in as the drama and suspense gains root in Jane's actions and we discover exactly what she has planned... I was reminded of some of my own backstabbers and must admit that I was gratified as the climatic ending was very satisfactory... While this book had quite a number of proofreading errors, there are few distractions in reading and understanding the story...  This is Plaisance's first attempt at drama and suspense and reveals the breadth of imagination and creatively in her storytelling, which she has continued to develop. Do check it out!

GABixlerReviews

Stabbing Pencey Boudreaux is Mary Lynn’s first attempt at drama and suspense. First and foremost, Mary Lynn Plaisance is a storyteller who has a magnificent imagination of stories that begs her to take a pen out and put her thoughts on paper. It may be her love of movies that gave her such an active imagination or her love of reading. But whatever makes the wheels in her mind roll, she keeps them rolling. She says, “An active mind is a mind at peace, no matter if you write, read, paint, have a hobby; whatever your expression is, keep expressing. The active mind is at peace. So, tell your stories. Let the pen roll. Tomorrow is promised to no one. Let the words come from the depths of your soul. Always fiction. Always drama. Always bold.” --Peace and Love. .....Mary Lynn Plaisance has been writing stories since she can remember, but her first published work was in 2004. She now has four fairy tale, fantasy books to her credit about a magical doll land called The Sha Bebe. There may be a few more added to The Chronicles of Sha Bebe, later. One never knows. You can find her books on Amazon, Barnes and Noble as well as many book stores and other sites online. Google her name. Books by Mary Lynn H. Plaisance --- Do You Believe -- In the Land of Sha Bebe ---Cajun Fairies -- In the Land of Sha Bebe ---The Wizard of Swamp Alley -- In the Land of Sha Bebe ---A Quizard is Born -- In the Doll Land of Sha Bebe.

An Easter Hymn - Christ the Lord is Risen Today!

1 Corinthians 5:6-8

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore, celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Themes touched upon by the Hymn "Christ the Lord is Risen Today"

First stanza: Christ is risen, therefore sing! 

Second stanza: The grave has lost its victory.

Third stanza: Love's redeeming work is done; Christ has              opened Paradise.

Fourth stanza: Following our exalted Head, like him we rise.

General Approach

In the hymn "Christ the Lord is Risen Today," the keynote of praise is sounded again and again. The beautiful lilies in church on Easter morning symbolize the message of joy and happiness and eternal life that comes to us. When we think of the bulb from which the Easter lily grows, we realize that the bulb was not dead in the sense of having no life at all. For that reason, even though there are many lilies and other symbols of the joy and the beauty of the resurrection, these things in themselves do not prove that there is a life after death. 

We speak about life after death in human beings we assume, first of all, that a corpse is dead, in contrast to a bulb which is not dead. We realize that when a person is dead there is no life in him. This realization forces us to come to a clear understanding of the significance of Easter--that Easter is more than a festival of spring. Easter proclaims new life. Easter is grounded in something different from anything found in nature which reveals renewal. Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Christ from the dead.

Let us turn again to the account in the Holy Scriptures about the death of Jesus Christ. The death of Jesus Christ was a real deal. He died mentally and spiritually and physically when he was crucified on Calvary. His resurrection therefore is truly from the dead. He arose on the third day. Therefore Wesley says, "Sing "Alleluia.'" This is a great event. Christ is risen from the dead. Death has lost its sting!

As a consequence of the fact that Christ is risen, death has lost its sting. 

While we mourn our loved ones who are lost and we miss them, yet the sting is gone. Those who believe in God through Jesus Christ are given new life and power by the resurrection; therefore, death has lost its sting. We feel that there is life beyond this world. A man who lost his loved one felt his separation from his loved one very keenly. He understood that life would not be the same any more, and yet he felt happy that his loved one was in heaven, that his loved one would be happy there for all eternity. In that sense death lost its sting for him, and he felt joyful as he thought not of himself but of his loved one who had gone before.

When a friend died, Peter Marshall, a Presbyterian pastor and chaplain of the United States Senate, commented, "I wonder what thrilling experience she's having at this very moment." After Marshall himself died, his wife wrote that she imagined that he had found the answer to his question. He very well may have rejoiced to find that Paradise is open. A great new world has been put before us, a finer, more beautiful world than anything that we have here on earth. Truly Paradise is open.

Each of the stanzas of the hymn actually gives us the Easter message, "Like Him we rise."

As Jesus arose, we too shall live. Once when a man came out the church door after the Easter service, as he shook hands with the pastor he said, "Thank you for the message." Then he added, "Of course, I don't believe the message but I thank you for giving it." It so happened that not very many weeks afterwards this man's wife passed away. As they were making arrangements for the funeral services, the man said to the minister, "Now I've got to believe what you said in your sermon last Easter. Would you say that again at the funeral services?" The Easter message is relevant. It has a practical application to us all. Easter is not a mere occasion for a ceremony; it is not merely a day for beauty and decoration. Easter is concerned with a very essential truth, with eternal life: "Like Him, we rise."

Therefore we need to have this message of Easter close to our hearts--that even in our unconscious minds. in our basic feelings and thoughts, we catch the vital importance of it and feel that "Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!... Where, O Death, is now thy sting?...Christ has opened Paradise...Like Him we Rise." Let us have this faith, and let us reassure ourselves of this faith so that we may be strong in His spirit and feel the relevance of this belief in our daily life. 

Jesus Has Risen -Vittorio Bianchini