C. S. Lakin
C. S. Lakin writes novels in numerous genres, focusing mostly on contemporary psychological mysteries and allegorical fantasy. Her novel Someone to Blame (contemporary fiction) won the 2009 Zondervan First Novel competition 2009 (published October 2010). Lakin’s Gates of Heaven fantasy series for adults (AMG-Living Ink Publishers) features original full-length fairy tales in traditional style. Already in print are the first books in the series, The Wolf of Tebron, The Map across Time, and The Land of Darkness, with four more to follow. In addition to her mysteries and fantasy series, she has also written the first book in a Young Adult sci-fi adventure series: Time Sniffers, available as an eBook. Her contemporary mystery Innocent Little Crimes made the top one hundred finalists in the 2009 Amazon Breakout Novel Award contest, earning her a Publisher’s Weekly review which stated her book was “a page-turning thrill-ride that will have readers holding their breaths the whole way through.”
Lakin currently works as a freelance copyeditor and writing mentor, specializing in helping authors prepare their books for publication. She is a member of The Christian PEN (Proofreaders and Editors Network), CEN (Christian Editor Network), CAN (Christian Authors Network—regular blogger), ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers), AWSA (Advanced Writers and Speakers Association), and two regional writers’ groups. She edits for individuals, small publishing companies, and literary agents, and teaches workshops and does critiques at writers’ conferences, and guest blogs on writing sites.
She recently completed Intended for Harm, a contemporary take-off on the biblical story of Jacob and Joseph and is developing a swashbuckling dog memoir in the style of Moby Dick entitled A Dog after God’s Own Heart. She lives in Santa Cruz, CA, with her husband Lee, a gigantic lab named Coaltrane, and three persnickety cats.
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Lakin currently works as a freelance copyeditor and writing mentor, specializing in helping authors prepare their books for publication. She is a member of The Christian PEN (Proofreaders and Editors Network), CEN (Christian Editor Network), CAN (Christian Authors Network—regular blogger), ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers), AWSA (Advanced Writers and Speakers Association), and two regional writers’ groups. She edits for individuals, small publishing companies, and literary agents, and teaches workshops and does critiques at writers’ conferences, and guest blogs on writing sites.
She recently completed Intended for Harm, a contemporary take-off on the biblical story of Jacob and Joseph and is developing a swashbuckling dog memoir in the style of Moby Dick entitled A Dog after God’s Own Heart. She lives in Santa Cruz, CA, with her husband Lee, a gigantic lab named Coaltrane, and three persnickety cats.
CSLakin.com Twitter Facebook LinkedIn
Intended for Harm
Literary Fiction/Contemporary/Spiritual
When JAKE ABRAMS, 23, finally leaves his oppressive father in Colorado to pursue his college dream in 1971, he steps off the bus in Los Angeles and bumps into LEAH SACKS, a vibrant antiwar protester with an indomitable spirit. Leah veers him off course with her passion, luring him into marriage and family before he knows what’s hit him.
Over the next eight years, the demands of a burgeoning family and a wife frequented by postpartum depression swallow up Jake’s dream of college and becoming a wood craftsman. Leah, in an attempt to pull out of her funk, has one baby after another, refuses treatment, and turns away from her overly concerned husband to find relief through drugs and booze. By the time Jake uncovers her need to sing and play guitar in a rock band, she has driven off with her lover in a van, leaving Jake behind with four small children feeling the pain of abandonment as keenly as he does.
In his despair, he seeks solace one night in a nearby church and encounters RACHEL, a devout, kind young woman who becomes the nanny for his children. Without intending, he falls hard for Rachel and marries her, despite his annoyance with her outspoken faith. Jake can’t believe what she tells him—that there is a God who cares for him, who has a plan for his life. Jake’s experience with his father makes the idea of a Father-God distasteful, and over the next years, their views clash and create tension. But through it all, Jake is happier than he’s ever been, and Rachel’s encouraging spirit leads him to pick up his dreams and his wood carving tools again.
Soon after they marry, Rachel gets pregnant, and when she becomes ill, they learn she has preeclampsia, a life-threatening condition. She makes it through her pregnancy and JOSEPH is born, but her doctor warns her never to get pregnant again. Jake, so in love with Rachel and grateful for her escape from death, sees his new son in a different light than his other, unwanted children. Joey is his love child, and his affection for him is evident, causing tension in the family. As the children grow up, they see the favoritism shown Joey—and to make matters worse, he has a strange gift. His innocent piousness and inexplicable faith in God gives him powers of healing. Despite the efforts of Joey’s brothers to hurt him, Joey thrives and begins to have dreams of them bowing to him—dreams he tells his brothers, making them hate him even more.
Jake’s family is unraveling, and he has no idea how to hold it together. When Rachel accidently gets pregnant six years after Joey’s birth, tension rises, and some of the children revolt. Rachel is supposed to rest in bed, but she doesn’t listen to her doctor, believing nothing bad can happen to her. When she punishes SIMON, her second oldest son, for hiding drugs in his room, he retaliates with his brother LEVI by destroying her beautiful garden. Despite her need to rest at eight months’ pregnant, she goes into her ruined garden and tries to weed it. Joey watches as she collapses, and although he begs God to help him heal his mother, the heavens are silent. Rachel dies but BEN, his baby brother, survives. Shaken, Joey determines God will not return his gift until he devotes his life to becoming a great doctor, and he sets his heart to this task.
Jake rails at a God who would give him the desire of his heart and then rip it from his hands. He spends the next nine years buried in his work as his children grow like wild, untamable vines. Only Joey and Ben stay close to his heart, and Jake’s preferential treatment toward them create a dangerous rift in the family. Ben is sickly, and his older sister, DINAH, becomes obsessed with caring for him. At one point Dinah is raped by the drummer in Simon’s band, and Simon and Levi eke out revenge and kill this teen. Joey overhears them talking and reports to their father, whose last remaining thread of affection for Leah’s sons snaps. Jake now pours his efforts into seeing Joey realize his dream of becoming a doctor. When Joey gets into UCLA as a premed student, Jake buys him a letterman jacket, but Joey announces they all must confess their dark secret to the police. The brothers take Joey out to celebrate, but Simon and Levi drug his drink and throw him off an overpass in South Central LA. When the eldest brother, REUBEN, learns in horror what they’ve done, he makes them take him to the overpass, only to discover no trace of Joey—only his bloodied jacket.
When they bring back news of Joey’s demise, Jake calls the police, but after a fervent search, Joey is nowhere to be found, dead or alive, and eventually is presumed dead. Jake’s heart breaks. He wanders mindlessly through his life, leaving Dinah to act as Ben’s nursemaid. By the time Ben hits his twenties, it is clear he will die if he does not get a kidney transplant, but no one in his family is a suitable donor and there is little hope he will get a match in time. Yet, Dinah rallies her brothers to her cause—to save Ben.
Meanwhile, Joseph, unconscious and battered, has been found and taken in by MOSEY, a black man who lives in a small apartment in a bad part of the city. A devout, God-fearing man, he feels called to help Joseph, who ends up living with him for two years. Joseph, despairing, has given up his dream and lost all hope after his brothers’ betrayal, but when Mosey’s granddaughter gets riddled by bullets in a drive-by shooting, Joseph touches her and heals her. Mosey and his daughter encourage and aid Joseph to rededicate to his dream, and send him off to med school with a new name and a new face—his face having been broken when he was thrown off the overpass. Joseph marries Mosey’s granddaughter, and by the time Ben needs a transplant , Joseph has become a leading kidney transplant surgeon.
Forty years after Jake left for college, his remaining sons take Ben to the clinic where Joseph works. Joseph encounters his brothers, and when they kneel and beg for his help, not recognizing him, Joseph remembers his childhood dreams. He tests his brothers’ hearts, then finally reveals who he is. His brothers, remorseful for their cruel actions, ask Joseph’s forgiveness. Joseph lets go of his anger and offers his kidney to save Ben’s life, as he is the only compatible match. After Ben is saved, Joseph returns home with his brothers to his awaiting father. And Jake, having for so long been bitter at God and mourning the loss of his precious son, realizes that God never intended harm, but had used the events in his life for good. He reunites not only with Joseph, but, in a true sense, with his estranged sons. His long wandering through his spiritual wilderness is over; he’s arrived at the Promised Land.
Amazon.com
When JAKE ABRAMS, 23, finally leaves his oppressive father in Colorado to pursue his college dream in 1971, he steps off the bus in Los Angeles and bumps into LEAH SACKS, a vibrant antiwar protester with an indomitable spirit. Leah veers him off course with her passion, luring him into marriage and family before he knows what’s hit him.
Over the next eight years, the demands of a burgeoning family and a wife frequented by postpartum depression swallow up Jake’s dream of college and becoming a wood craftsman. Leah, in an attempt to pull out of her funk, has one baby after another, refuses treatment, and turns away from her overly concerned husband to find relief through drugs and booze. By the time Jake uncovers her need to sing and play guitar in a rock band, she has driven off with her lover in a van, leaving Jake behind with four small children feeling the pain of abandonment as keenly as he does.
In his despair, he seeks solace one night in a nearby church and encounters RACHEL, a devout, kind young woman who becomes the nanny for his children. Without intending, he falls hard for Rachel and marries her, despite his annoyance with her outspoken faith. Jake can’t believe what she tells him—that there is a God who cares for him, who has a plan for his life. Jake’s experience with his father makes the idea of a Father-God distasteful, and over the next years, their views clash and create tension. But through it all, Jake is happier than he’s ever been, and Rachel’s encouraging spirit leads him to pick up his dreams and his wood carving tools again.
Soon after they marry, Rachel gets pregnant, and when she becomes ill, they learn she has preeclampsia, a life-threatening condition. She makes it through her pregnancy and JOSEPH is born, but her doctor warns her never to get pregnant again. Jake, so in love with Rachel and grateful for her escape from death, sees his new son in a different light than his other, unwanted children. Joey is his love child, and his affection for him is evident, causing tension in the family. As the children grow up, they see the favoritism shown Joey—and to make matters worse, he has a strange gift. His innocent piousness and inexplicable faith in God gives him powers of healing. Despite the efforts of Joey’s brothers to hurt him, Joey thrives and begins to have dreams of them bowing to him—dreams he tells his brothers, making them hate him even more.
Jake’s family is unraveling, and he has no idea how to hold it together. When Rachel accidently gets pregnant six years after Joey’s birth, tension rises, and some of the children revolt. Rachel is supposed to rest in bed, but she doesn’t listen to her doctor, believing nothing bad can happen to her. When she punishes SIMON, her second oldest son, for hiding drugs in his room, he retaliates with his brother LEVI by destroying her beautiful garden. Despite her need to rest at eight months’ pregnant, she goes into her ruined garden and tries to weed it. Joey watches as she collapses, and although he begs God to help him heal his mother, the heavens are silent. Rachel dies but BEN, his baby brother, survives. Shaken, Joey determines God will not return his gift until he devotes his life to becoming a great doctor, and he sets his heart to this task.
Jake rails at a God who would give him the desire of his heart and then rip it from his hands. He spends the next nine years buried in his work as his children grow like wild, untamable vines. Only Joey and Ben stay close to his heart, and Jake’s preferential treatment toward them create a dangerous rift in the family. Ben is sickly, and his older sister, DINAH, becomes obsessed with caring for him. At one point Dinah is raped by the drummer in Simon’s band, and Simon and Levi eke out revenge and kill this teen. Joey overhears them talking and reports to their father, whose last remaining thread of affection for Leah’s sons snaps. Jake now pours his efforts into seeing Joey realize his dream of becoming a doctor. When Joey gets into UCLA as a premed student, Jake buys him a letterman jacket, but Joey announces they all must confess their dark secret to the police. The brothers take Joey out to celebrate, but Simon and Levi drug his drink and throw him off an overpass in South Central LA. When the eldest brother, REUBEN, learns in horror what they’ve done, he makes them take him to the overpass, only to discover no trace of Joey—only his bloodied jacket.
When they bring back news of Joey’s demise, Jake calls the police, but after a fervent search, Joey is nowhere to be found, dead or alive, and eventually is presumed dead. Jake’s heart breaks. He wanders mindlessly through his life, leaving Dinah to act as Ben’s nursemaid. By the time Ben hits his twenties, it is clear he will die if he does not get a kidney transplant, but no one in his family is a suitable donor and there is little hope he will get a match in time. Yet, Dinah rallies her brothers to her cause—to save Ben.
Meanwhile, Joseph, unconscious and battered, has been found and taken in by MOSEY, a black man who lives in a small apartment in a bad part of the city. A devout, God-fearing man, he feels called to help Joseph, who ends up living with him for two years. Joseph, despairing, has given up his dream and lost all hope after his brothers’ betrayal, but when Mosey’s granddaughter gets riddled by bullets in a drive-by shooting, Joseph touches her and heals her. Mosey and his daughter encourage and aid Joseph to rededicate to his dream, and send him off to med school with a new name and a new face—his face having been broken when he was thrown off the overpass. Joseph marries Mosey’s granddaughter, and by the time Ben needs a transplant , Joseph has become a leading kidney transplant surgeon.
Forty years after Jake left for college, his remaining sons take Ben to the clinic where Joseph works. Joseph encounters his brothers, and when they kneel and beg for his help, not recognizing him, Joseph remembers his childhood dreams. He tests his brothers’ hearts, then finally reveals who he is. His brothers, remorseful for their cruel actions, ask Joseph’s forgiveness. Joseph lets go of his anger and offers his kidney to save Ben’s life, as he is the only compatible match. After Ben is saved, Joseph returns home with his brothers to his awaiting father. And Jake, having for so long been bitter at God and mourning the loss of his precious son, realizes that God never intended harm, but had used the events in his life for good. He reunites not only with Joseph, but, in a true sense, with his estranged sons. His long wandering through his spiritual wilderness is over; he’s arrived at the Promised Land.
Amazon.com
Conundrum
Contemporary Suspense/Mystery/ Women's Fiction
A happily married man with three small children decides one day he no longer wants to live. He gives himself leukemia and nine months later is dead.
This is the conundrum Lisa Sitteroff is determined to solve regarding her dead father—the tale her mother, Ruth, told Lisa and her two brothers, Rafferty and Neal, throughout their childhood. But Lisa, now thirty and watching Raff suffer from the ravages of bipolar illness, believes if she can solve this puzzle, she might somehow save her brother. For Raff’s pain is intrinsically tied up with feelings of parental abandonment.
What starts as a noble goal for Lisa soon grows into a vicious family war, wreaking destruction on Lisa’s marriage. Lisa discovers details of her parents’ relationship that her mother has long hidden. Shocking clues appear as Lisa reads a letter her father, Nathan, wrote before he died, prompting her to visit Nathan’s former boss, Ed Hutchinson. From him, Lisa learns that her engineer father helped design a generator run by radioactive materials. Ed lets slip that Nathan participated in a dangerous secret experiment, a fact her mother discounts as Nathan’s cause of death. Accusations and excuses fly. Yet, how much of what Lisa uncovers is true? Is truth solely subjective?
Lisa sifts through layers of lies as she journeys into her father’s story, seeking to understand this man she never knew. Meanwhile, her mother responds in fury and tries to destroy Lisa’s life, determined to keep Lisa from uncovering her dark secrets.
Conundrum explores the rocky landscape of betrayal and truth, asking whether a search for truth is worth the price, and showing how separating from toxic family members might sometimes be the only recourse for survival. Lisa pays a high price for truth, but in the end finds it worthwhile.
Amazon.com
A happily married man with three small children decides one day he no longer wants to live. He gives himself leukemia and nine months later is dead.
This is the conundrum Lisa Sitteroff is determined to solve regarding her dead father—the tale her mother, Ruth, told Lisa and her two brothers, Rafferty and Neal, throughout their childhood. But Lisa, now thirty and watching Raff suffer from the ravages of bipolar illness, believes if she can solve this puzzle, she might somehow save her brother. For Raff’s pain is intrinsically tied up with feelings of parental abandonment.
What starts as a noble goal for Lisa soon grows into a vicious family war, wreaking destruction on Lisa’s marriage. Lisa discovers details of her parents’ relationship that her mother has long hidden. Shocking clues appear as Lisa reads a letter her father, Nathan, wrote before he died, prompting her to visit Nathan’s former boss, Ed Hutchinson. From him, Lisa learns that her engineer father helped design a generator run by radioactive materials. Ed lets slip that Nathan participated in a dangerous secret experiment, a fact her mother discounts as Nathan’s cause of death. Accusations and excuses fly. Yet, how much of what Lisa uncovers is true? Is truth solely subjective?
Lisa sifts through layers of lies as she journeys into her father’s story, seeking to understand this man she never knew. Meanwhile, her mother responds in fury and tries to destroy Lisa’s life, determined to keep Lisa from uncovering her dark secrets.
Conundrum explores the rocky landscape of betrayal and truth, asking whether a search for truth is worth the price, and showing how separating from toxic family members might sometimes be the only recourse for survival. Lisa pays a high price for truth, but in the end finds it worthwhile.
Amazon.com
Time Sniffers
YA Fantasy/romance/Sci-Fi
An explosion at a secret laboratory. A rift in space-time. Alien dogs that can camouflage and sniff rips in time with their supervac noses. Be prepared to traverse shifting time streams and deeply entrenched shadow worlds in a wild and crazy fantasy/sci-fi near-future that will make your head spin and your heart pound.
Chockful of science and romance (yes, the two are compatible!), follow Bria Harrison, brilliant teenage daughter of two prominent scientists, as she searches for her mother, whom she insists is alive, despite the devastating explosion at the National Laboratory. While re-creating her mother’s last experiment in her basement, Bria, her autistic brother Dylan, and four friends cause a rip in time-space—and out of the resultant black hole tumbles K-Six, a time sniffer who has come to get them.
This doglike alien takes them back through the rip to his training world, where the teens must be altered to adapt to dangerous time confluences and worlds they must traverse to save the scientists trapped in a time eddy. If the scientists cannot be rescued soon, dark energy, now streaming into the galaxy at an alarming rate, will cause horrific destruction—including the end of all life on earth.
Amazon.com
An explosion at a secret laboratory. A rift in space-time. Alien dogs that can camouflage and sniff rips in time with their supervac noses. Be prepared to traverse shifting time streams and deeply entrenched shadow worlds in a wild and crazy fantasy/sci-fi near-future that will make your head spin and your heart pound.
Chockful of science and romance (yes, the two are compatible!), follow Bria Harrison, brilliant teenage daughter of two prominent scientists, as she searches for her mother, whom she insists is alive, despite the devastating explosion at the National Laboratory. While re-creating her mother’s last experiment in her basement, Bria, her autistic brother Dylan, and four friends cause a rip in time-space—and out of the resultant black hole tumbles K-Six, a time sniffer who has come to get them.
This doglike alien takes them back through the rip to his training world, where the teens must be altered to adapt to dangerous time confluences and worlds they must traverse to save the scientists trapped in a time eddy. If the scientists cannot be rescued soon, dark energy, now streaming into the galaxy at an alarming rate, will cause horrific destruction—including the end of all life on earth.
Amazon.com
Innocent Little Crimes
contemporary suspense/mystery/women's fiction
Lila Carmichael, outrageous, bawdy comedienne, is a rich and powerful woman in television. But, it's not enough she has everything she desires; for fifteen years she has been obsessively orchestrating payback to five unsuspecting, former schoolmates—“friends” who played a nasty trick on her, and now it’s her turn for revenge.
Under the flattering auspices of a cozy college reunion, these unsuspecting classmates are invited to Lila’s private island for a weekend from hell where Lila forces them to play a vicious parlor game—a psychological “Ten Little Indians,” where one by one Lila’s guests are figuratively killed-off. Yet, revenge turns bittersweet when the weekend is over and one guest is dead.
A psychological spinoff of Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians" that Publisher's Weekly calls "A page-turning thrill ride that will have readers holding their breaths the whole way through."
Amazon.com
Lila Carmichael, outrageous, bawdy comedienne, is a rich and powerful woman in television. But, it's not enough she has everything she desires; for fifteen years she has been obsessively orchestrating payback to five unsuspecting, former schoolmates—“friends” who played a nasty trick on her, and now it’s her turn for revenge.
Under the flattering auspices of a cozy college reunion, these unsuspecting classmates are invited to Lila’s private island for a weekend from hell where Lila forces them to play a vicious parlor game—a psychological “Ten Little Indians,” where one by one Lila’s guests are figuratively killed-off. Yet, revenge turns bittersweet when the weekend is over and one guest is dead.
A psychological spinoff of Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians" that Publisher's Weekly calls "A page-turning thrill ride that will have readers holding their breaths the whole way through."
Amazon.com
