It was a dark and stormy decade, but I finally found a publisher for my novel, “Little Victories“!

The aptly named Last Chance Press released it today, which, coincidentally, is the 9th anniversary of ThePenMarket.com’s launch! I guess good things are meant to happen on August 5th. I should buy a lottery ticket.

My novel exposes the travesties and small successes of the American children’s mental healthcare system. From laws written to unintentionally benefit sex offenders and other abusers to spending cuts on social services, this story gives voice to the voiceless children across America who are being as abused by the bureaucracy as much as they are their tormentors.

Far from being a bleeding-heart crusade, it is a cold reality check that follows a year in the life of a mental health worker and the elementary school students she tries to help. The characters are fictional, as to write about real people would break confidentiality laws, but the events are events that happen every day in every community in the United States. I’ve spoken with scores of teachers, mental health workers, social workers and local child-protective agency employees. Specific wording of the various laws referenced in the book vary a little from state to state, but the core of the problems are the same in all 50 states. Experts in several states have read this and agree that I’ve nailed the heart of the problems while showcasing the lives most effected by them.

There are no long, dry political rants; this book just shows life as it really is from the points of view of the people most intimately involved in the system. It is a very fast-paced read that I hope keeps you turning the pages.

It is a hard-hitting book, which I hope goes a long way to help people, much like the Boston Globe’s unveiling of the Catholic Church’s child-sex scandal. That reporting only exposed problems in the priesthood. “Little Victories” sheds light on a far more wide-ranging national problem.

As depressing as it can be at times, I intentionally keep a steady stream of really dark humor running through the book. People working under that kind of pressure and duress keep their sanity via gallows humor, which I consciously included to pepper the dialogue and narrative as these employees would. It works much the way humor does in “Catch 22,” the classic Joseph Heller novel about World War II.

I would be hugely honored if you bought a copy of “Little Victories.” You can ask for it in any book store, and you can find it in print and on Kindle at Amazon.com. If you order it from Amazon, please, please, please write a review for it. If I can get enough reviews on Amazon, it will help tremendously to get the word out.

This wouldn’t be much of a blog post for a pen site, if I didn’t mention the pens I used to write this book.

When I started writing this book in early 2005, I was writing in my off hours when I was an editor at a newspaper. I needed some relief from the computer, so I opted to enjoy myself writing the 326-page rough draft longhand. I wrote with my entire–very limited collection–of fountain pens. I wrote the most with my late grandfather’s 1928 Sheaffer Lifetime (black and pearl), a gold Cross Townsend, a Cross Metropolis and a 1945 Parker Vacumatic Major in emerald pearl. I worked in a Rotring double-broad stub pen, too.

It is much easier to compose on a computer, and I probably won’t write another novel out longhand, first, but it was very cathartic to do it on this novel.

Please buy a copy of “Little Victories” and join the fight to help abused kids in your community. Thank you!