Author’s Note

Ten years ago, I embarked on a writing journey to tell the story I wish I could have read as a teen. A story that evokes the unparalleled rush of first love in all its dreamlike and naive complications, one that portrays a fiercely acerbic Russian American teenager, Mina Arkova, and her first-generation tough-as-nails mother. One that paints a very different portrait in its portrayal of Oliver Mondell’s life, a child abuse survivor who grew up in the foster care system and is moving to Los Angeles for a fresh start.

The Love and Other Sins series is a new beginning for me as a storyteller after spending many years telling other peoples’ stories through the craft of acting. Love and Other Sins is a contemporary young adult series about Mina Arkova, a good student with a nonexistent social life. Mina’s life is going according to plan until she is transferred into a public high school and gets held at knifepoint in an alley. Meanwhile, Oliver Mondell is ready to burn down his old life. Oliver wants to start from scratch—complete with a new name and emancipation papers. Oliver’s life is purgatory until he moves to Los Angeles and is on his way to becoming one of the most successful seventeen-year-old electronics hustlers in the country. Oliver and Mina develop a strong bond as the threads of their old lives begin to unravel, and they must reckon with a family history that violently refuses to remain in the past. Love and Other Sins follows the chaos that ensues when Mina and Oliver get caught between a brutal tug-of-war. Oliver and Mina’s distinctive identities are in jeopardy when the overpowering phenomenon—the tidal wave of first love—sweeps over them and triggers a compulsory shift toward codependency.

Love and Other Sins is a fictional novel inspired by extensive research, observations, and personal experiences. In crafting Mina and Oliver’s story, I rediscovered the madness ignited when the separate worlds of two vastly different young people collided for the first time. It was a stark reminder that although the yearning to be loved can distort previously unwavering principles, there is a deep-rooted significance in preserving one's unique identity.