Literary Las Vegas: Jessie Humphries
Protagonist Ruby Rose faces many of the same challenges of any teen in Las Vegas author Jessie Humphries’ young adult contemporary thriller “Killing Ruby Rose.”
Will Liam Slater, “Mr. Elusive, Mr. Preseason Favorite for Most Beautiful Eyes of the Senior Class, Mr. Too Cool for School (ask her) Miss Too School for Cool, to be his Senior Homecoming date?” How will she please her best friend Alana? How can she, and should she, mend fences with her mother? And how will she get the scuff off her strappy, black-leather Calvin Klein wedge heels?
But Ruby is far from “normal.”
Before his untimely death, her father trained her to defend herself.
“Surely, he’d never envisioned his young scholar turning into a vigilante stalker,” a teen more comfortable trailing a murderer who beat the system than being asked out on a date.
Humphries is scheduled to speak on pitching to agents and editors during a meeting of the Las Vegas Writers Group scheduled for 7 p.m. Sept. 18 at the Tap House, 5589 W. Charleston Blvd. A $5 meeting fee is charged. For more information, visit meetup.com/las-vegas-writers.
For more on Humphries, visit jessiehumphries.com.
Excerpt:
Sure, I knew that stalking criminals was a bizarre after-school activity for a seventeen-year-old girl. But ever since SWAT Sergeant Jack Rose (aka my fallen father) was killed “in the line of duty,” I’d needed an outlet. A way to honor his memory. A challenge to focus all my efforts on. And yoga wasn’t doing the trick.
Since the Department wasn’t talking, or releasing any information on the “continuing investigation” into his death that seemed more like a “discontinued investigation,” I had to do something to overcome the gnawing need for justice that never came. Obsessing over catching a predator my dad had hoped to put away had become that something. It wouldn’t bring Dad back from the dead, but it had brought me back from wanting to die. I could no longer afford to be the helpless little girl who cried herself to sleep every night. I had to find a reason to live.
And Sergeant Jack Rose hadn’t made me a weapons specialist and combat expert for nothing. For as long as I could remember, he’d trained me to be able to defend myself and protect others. Between sparring lessons and shooting practice, a spooky sound track had played in my head as he went on and on about what a dangerous world we lived in.
Nowhere was safe.
