Dr. Lee Tobin McClain, director of Seton Hill University’s Master of Arts in Writing Popular Fiction, has released a new teen novel, “My Loco Life,” available at local bookstores and online from Dorchester Press. The book is the third in her “Alternate Life” series featuring a magic computer game that lets foster and adopted teens see what life would have been like with their birth families.

“My Loco Life” tells the story of Alicia Jiminez, a foster teen who wants to win a scholarship to the fashion institute of Madrid. But to compete, she’s got to undo her mental block against learning Spanish—which means dealing with her feelings about her birth family. Help comes in the form of handsome Hector Cardona, Alicia’s neighbor, who’s eager to tutor Alicia even at the risk of upsetting his catty ex-girlfriend, Alicia’s chief rival for the fashion scholarship.

“Teenagers in foster care get a bad rap,” says McClain, a longtime advocate for at-risk youth. “These kids have to be heroic just to live their lives, so I wanted to write books that portray them as heroes.”

McClain also wanted her series to be entertaining and easy to read. “Even though my books address some serious issues—in fact, because they do—I wanted them to be accessible to a wide audience,” she says. Plenty of fashion, dating, and tugs at the heartstrings keep teens turning the pages.

An adoptive mother, McClain is active in local adoption organizations and writes a column about foster children and reading for Fostering Families Today magazine.

The Master of Arts in Writing Popular Fiction teaches students to write marketable novels in popular genres like mystery, romance, children’s literature, science fiction, horror, and fantasy. For more information on the Master of Arts in Writing Popular Fiction, please visit www.setonhill.edu.

--

Contacts:

Dr. Lee McClain, Professor of English and Director, Writing Popular Fiction Program
610-277-1117 / McClain@setonhill.edu

Becca Baker, Associate Director of Media Relations
724-830-1069 / 724-689-3599 (cell) / bbaker@setonhill.edu