This is my fifth novel. Year of the Firefly. I began writing it in 2019 and finished it in 2020. Unlike the four books that preceded it, I haven’t talked about this one much. Mainly because it was written during one of the more turbulent and volatile stretches in our nation’s history and chronicles the era from the point of view of a young liberal college student who manages to land herself in jail.

But despite Miranda McGuire’s political views, this is not a political story. Year of the Firefly is the story of a highly intelligent opioid addict attempting to navigate the criminal justice system while simultaneously grappling with all the issues that many young women have to deal with.

Why am I qualified to tell this story? I’m not. That’s why I view it as a miracle. It’s one thing to accurately depict the male prisoner experience, a subject I have known intimately since I was a 13-year-old in juvenile hall, but what do I know about synchronized menstruation? What do I know about colostrum and oxytocin and postpartum depression? What do I know about sexual pressure from staff? Absolutely nothing.

But in 2018, I kept receiving these messages from newly released women who had read Dragonfly or Giants on lockdown, thanking me for shining a light and saying things like “you wrote my life…”

Whoa.

So this is how the Miranda Rights series was born. And after five years, I’m a couple weeks away from releasing the final installment of the trilogy. Law of Momentum. Probably the last book I will write as a prisoner. In the meantime, Book One, Year of the Firefly, will be available as a free download in eBook format on Amazon for the first five days of October. Write me a review if you feel compelled 🙂

For those of you who have been reading my novels for the last decade and change, I appreciate you more than words. ❤ See you on the other side. Momentum.