The phone rang as she threw the last few ingredients in the crock pot for dinner. She snatched it up.
“How did today go?” Her dad always led with this, as if her breakdown were imminent.
“Fine,” she said.
“I met a guy on the chairlift today,” he said.
“Mm-hmm,” she said with what she hoped was a sufficient amount of interest.
“I think I got you a job.”
A jolt of fear shot through her gut. What had her dad gotten her into?
“I gave him your card. Told him you were an environmental consultant and a whiz with media relations. He seemed very interested.”
“I see. And who is he exactly?”
“The CEO of the new magnesium mine.”
The jolt of fear became a wave of horror. Her dad thought she would be interested in working for a mining company? Where had the lines of communication broken down?
“Right. I’m not sure if I’m actually in favor of the mine, Dad.”
Duncan flipped a playing card at Katie. Alana gave him a bulgy-eyed look, but he ignored her.
“Oh, don’t worry about that. Just talk to him. He’ll be calling you.”
She considered explaining that ethically she would not be interested in working for a mining company, but then stopped herself. Her dad would just brush this off as stupid. Actually, it wouldn’t even register as stupid on his radar; it would be so outside of his worldview that he would take it as the inane rambling of some slightly unhinged person who could not be his daughter, and he’d carry on stalking the CEO on the chairlift and show up at the company Christmas party because he was certain his daughter was a company employee.
Title: Confessions of a Failed Environmentalist
Author: Jennifer Ellis
Genre: Romantic Comedy / Women’s Fiction
Alana Matheson always tries to do the right thing for the environment, even when it means boycotting school meatball day, forgoing the use of makeup, or getting entangled in a bet with her non-chicken-loving ex-husband over which of them can be the most environmentally conscious.
So when a mining company proposes developing a mine right in the middle of the community watershed, well, of course Alana is going to be on the front lines opposing the development.
Except she isn’t. To her own shock and dismay, she finds herself taking a job… with the mining company. Worse, she finds herself drawn to her attractive and mysterious boss, Nate: a capitalist mining executive. The enemy.
Alana struggles to do right by the community, deal with her feelings for Nate, and maintain her own environmental morals. But as the conflict over the mine heats up, it gets increasingly difficult to be on the “wrong side,” and both Nate and Alana are cracking under the pressure.
Part satire, part serious, Confessions of a Failed Environmentalist is about the cast of characters who seem to pop up in all environmental disputes, and how all of us fail sometimes to do the right thing for the environment, in both big and small ways.
Author Bio
Jennifer lives in the mountains of British Columbia where she can be found writing, hiking, skiing, borrowing dogs, and evading bears. She also works occasionally as an environmental researcher.
Jennifer writes science fiction, romance and dystopian fiction for children and adults, including Apocalypse Weird: Reversal in Wonderment Media’s Apocalypse Weird world and A Pair of Docks, which was a bestseller in children’s time travel fiction. She has also contributed to several anthologies, most notably Synchronic: 13 Tales of Time Travel, which hit #16 in the Kindle Store.
She may or may not have a Ph.D. and dabble in tarot card reading and cat sitting.
You can subscribe to her blog for the latest book news and industry insights at www.jenniferellis.ca. She tweets about writing, cats and teenagers at @jenniferlellis.
Links
Amazon.com: http://amzn.com/B00Z9BPCSU
Amazon.ca: http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00Z9BPCSU
Website: www.jenniferellis.ca
Twitter: @jenniferlellis
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.ellis.756859