About
ADULTERY, ALCOHOLISM, MENTAL ILLNESS - These are social issues that can take a devastating toll on families.
The characters that I write about are not perfect. They are far from it, actually. Even heroes have a chink in their armor. It's what makes them human.
My stories are filled with emotion, intimacy, drama, and hope. If you like these things and don't mind a few racy scenes or a sprinkling of profanity here and there, then my books are for you.
I have written three novels: "After All Is Said And Done", "The Monster of Silver Creek", and the recently released "Seasons of Darkness".
Late at night, you'll find me holed up in my office/closet gleefully typing away on my keyboard. It's a place where tall, dark, and handsome meets high drama - and is located just underneath the winter coats. :)
Size Zero (Visage Book 1)
Description
<p style="margin:0px 0px 14px;padding:0px;font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;"><strong>"A somber, disturbing mystery fused with a scathing look at the fashion industry. </strong><strong>Mangin writes in a confident, razor-edged style."</strong><strong> - Kirkus Reviews</strong></p><p style="margin:-4px 0px 14px;padding:0px;font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;"><strong>Condom dresses and space helmets have debuted on fashion runways.</strong></p><p style="margin:-4px 0px 14px;padding:0px;font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;">A dead body becomes the trend when a coat made of human skin saunters down fashion's biggest stage. The body is identified as Annabelle Leigh, the teenager who famously disappeared over a decade ago from her boyfriend's New York City mansion.</p><p style="margin:-4px 0px 14px;padding:0px;font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;">This new evidence casts suspicion back on the former boyfriend, Cecil LeClaire. Now a monk, he is forced to return to his dark and absurd childhood home to clear his name. He teams up with Ava Germaine, a renegade ex-model. And together, they investigate the depraved and lawless modeling industry behind Cecil's family fortune.</p><p style="margin:-4px 0px 14px;padding:0px;font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;">They find erotic canes, pet rats living in crystal castles, and dresses made of crushed butterfly wings. But Cecil finds more truth in the luxury goods than in the people themselves. Everyone he meets seems to be wearing a person-suit. Terrified of showing their true selves, the glitterati put on flamboyant public personas to make money and friends. Can Cecil find truth in a world built on lies?</p><p style="margin:-4px 0px 0px;padding:0px;font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px;"><strong>In high fashion modeling, selling bodies is organized crime.</strong></p>
Story Behind The Book
The mind is a beautiful thing. It can be a restful place to retreat at the end of a long, hard day, and at times be absolutely overflowing with joyful thoughts, imagination and wonderment. It can also be a dark and lonely imprisonment, full of terrible sadness laced with incoherent ramblings, and impossible delusions of grandeur.
Bipolar disorder affects approximately 5.7 million adults in America. Of these persons, nearly half of them will try to commit suicide at least once in their lifetime. Women however, may attempt it two to three times. These statistics alone are a heartbreaking fact - but add a name or a face of a family member to it, and it becomes devastating. Mental illness not only touches those who have it - it consumes their loved ones as well, leaving a haunting impression long after they are gone.
In Seasons of Darkness, I explore the dynamics of one fictional family living with such an aftermath. Everett Harrington, a no-nonsense businessman, should have taken Natalia's behavior that night as a sign of things to come, but hadn't. When it came to her, he found himself unable to think clearly. It was on a scorching afternoon in late July that he had stood at the altar with her, making a promise in front of God and her parents to love her for better or for worse - and it was ten years later, on a rainy morning in September that he'd buried her. The days in between had been filled with brief intervals of happiness...and long periods of hopelessness.
Now, left alone to raise a son he can't talk to and a daughter that he wants nothing to do with, he chooses to spend his evenings drowning his frustrations in a bottle of scotch, leaving him without the ability to control his temper.
Forced to grow up in a hurry, nine-year-old Ethan Harrington quickly learned to build a wall around his heart, vowing never to let it be hurt again. Now sixteen, and still ravaged by his mother's death, he struggles to live among the shattered remains of a family that was never functional to begin with.
As Ethan and Everett try to move on, Natalia's life is tenderly told through their eyes in vivid flashbacks that weaves throughout the book. A story of hope - even in the darkest of times, this is a coming-of-age novel that depicts the sometimes difficult and oftentimes complex relationship experienced between father and son when tragedy strikes.
