Inscribed or signed books, by young adult author, LK Gardner-Griffie. Hours of entertainment for less than the cost of a movie. Click here for more details. 

The third book in the award-winning Misfit McCabe young adult series has been released. More about Tattered coming soon.

Misfit McCabe earns Pearson Prize Teen Choice Award runner up honors: Press Release details can be found in this News Article.

Nowhere Feels Like Home, the second book in the Misfit McCabe series wins Pearson Prize Teen Choice Award honors: Press Release details can be found in this News Article.

Latest books I've reviewed:

• Molly Hacker Is Too Picky! by Lisette Brodey
• Facing Demons by Ashley Sanders
• Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes by Denise Grover Swank
• The Fallen Queen by Jane Kindred
• Candy Wars: The Tooth Fairies vs The Candy King by R.G. Cordiner

Most recent articles written: 

• Author Spotlight: PJ Cowan
• The Reader's Gift
• Lost in the Crowd... But Not For Long
• Banned in New Zealand
• The Twinkie Defense: Teen Drinking and Violence
• Born This Way Foundation
• The Victim's Fault?

 Best Misfit McCabe Review:  "Move over Judy Blume! McCabe is a New Teen Character for a New Generation", August 31, 2008
Shannon Yarbrough, The LL Book Review and Author of Stealing Wishes.
To read the full review, click here.

Check out my You Tube Book Trailer to the right. 

About Me

The shorter, more professional version:

As a young adult (YA) fiction writer, LK Gardner-Griffie enjoys acclaim as a two-time winner of the Pearson Prize Teen Choice Award for Misfit McCabe (2009) and Nowhere Feels Like Home (2010), the first two books in her Misfit McCabe series. Her love of the young adult category is long standing and she thrives on exploring the tumultuous emotions and life choices of the teen years. 

Daughter to a rocket scientist and an artist, LK combines the traits of both into a quirky yet pragmatic writer. She began to foster her love of writing after reading Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and discovering she had a great deal in common with the character Jo. The making up of stories, dramatic feelings, and a quick temper were enough for her to know she and Jo would have been kindred spirits. Her love of writing has grown over the years, along with the list of projects she wants to tackle.

In addition to writing, LK holds down a full-time job with an international transportation company as a process and efficiency expert. Her leisure time is spent with her husband sharing a love of music, singing, and college baseball. She writes into the night with the help of her three long-haired miniature dachshunds.

The longer, more rambling version:

Born in Seattle, WA and raised & living in Southern California, I am definitely a west coast girl. I started reading when I was 2 years old, so I don't remember learning how, just that books have always been a part of my life. I've always enjoyed reading and as far back as I can remember have added things to the story lines, kind of like a game I played with myself.  Louisa May Alcott's series of Little Women, Little Men, and Jo's Boys provided the biggest influence in my life to encourage me to write. That, and the fact of the matter is, ideas grab me, disturb my sleep and won't leave me alone until they have been unleashed from my mind. For me that part is like the infatuation part of a relationship. Everything is new and shiny and you get to see your ideas take shape and grow, and take on a life of their own. Then comes the hard part - the actual grunge work of writing - the rewrites. And the problem with re-writes is knowing when to leave it alone - there's always something to tweak, a phrase, a nuance that could be improved. I started working on my first (never to see the light of day) novel at the age of 9 because there weren't enough books written for my age group, in my opinion. And so the saga goes. . . 

Another author that has influenced me as a writer:  Mark Twain.  I literally read the cover off of Tom Sawyer and later Huckleberry Finn.  As a teen, I became incensed by the movement to ban Huckleberry Finn from the approved reading list, and even worse, copies were being burned!  Huckleberry Finn is an incredible example of the reflections of the time, and to burn it because it was no longer politically correct is a crime.

I live with my husband, Denny and our three long-haired dachshunds, Gryphon, Phoenix, and Elsa.  By day I work in the world of international transportation, streamlining processes, building tools for efficiency, and keeping all systems running smoothly.  Night is when imagination takes flight.

LK Gardner-Griffie

Misfit McCabe, Nowhere Feels Like Home, and Tattered are available in 9 different e-book formats at Smashwords.com