Enlightened: Enlightened Hope (ePub)

Once upon a time – [No, no, no! Far too trite and, let's be honest, it's been done. Hit “pause”, “rewind”...]

Many, many, many years ago – [Ack! That's even worse! What's with all the freakin' “many's”? It wasn't that long ago. Jeesh. Hit “stop”, “erase” (and don't ever do that again!)...]

Not so very long ago (a piddling amount, in my opinion), a storyteller was born. One might even say, a fantasy weaver (oooh, I like that – kinda rolls off the tongue, dontcha think?). Hand in hand with her most trusted friend, an imaginary boy named Charlie (awww, I miss Charlie), she wove many a tale of aliens and evil clones who impersonated her elder brothers (for certainly she wasn't actually related to those wretched boys who teased and taunted her mercilessly) while growing up in Ontario, Canada. Even when Charlie faded away, she continued to live in her own fantasy world, telling her stories to her stuffed animals, and finally writing them down when she was old enough to know how.

Later in life, she graduated from McMaster University, armed with degree in Psychology, with a minor in Anthropology. An avid fan of Paranormal Romances (werewolves and vampires and ghosts, oh my!), it was hardly surprising, then, that she decided to invent an entirely new species - Homo Illuminatus – to weave her fantasies around.

Today, she continues to live (on the surface, at any rate – in her mind she's in another world entirely!) in Ontario, with her son (teenaged – need I say more?), an adorable (borderline evil, and most definitely psychotic) Ragdoll cat, and a sloppy (fragile and sensitive, big arsed) Dogue de Bordeau dog (who, sadly, is terrorized by the demonic cat).