That may be because I like to delve into universal topics like justice, illiteracy, and bigotry, and I pepper my stories with characters that are many different ages. A lot of my readers are way beyond their teen years. My young adult books seem to appeal to a wider audience than I expected. I love to write contemporary/realistic novels about young people, but when I get tired of teen angst and turmoil, I turn to middle grade fantasy/adventure. How would you describe your books to first time readers? I believe this is now officially an addiction. By the time Alligators Overhead was published, I’d published four books. I thought it would be my last, but I was wrong. That led me to writing Sliding on the Edge, which was my first novel. I read that four out of five Ivy League students admitted to some form of self-abuse, so I set out to find out why. It was a newspaper article that started me down this writing/publishing path. What made you decide to write and publish your first book? I started in a California valley town called Modesto, moved to San Diego, Alhambra, San Bernardino then north to Gilroy and Morgan Hill and finally landed in the Santa Cruz Mountains. If you currently reside somewhere besides where you were born, what’s the story that lead from there to here?Īs I said above, I’ve lived different places in the world, including South East Asia, but I keep coming back to the state I was born in.

I’m a California native who has left the state and the country to live other places, but I’ve always returned home, so I’m once again in the Golden State where I started. Where are you from originally and where do you reside now? Lee McKenzie Author of Alligators Overhead Home » Author Interviews » Interview with C.

Alligators Overhead by C. Lee McKenzie