As you may have noticed, I sell my books on amazon.com. I have a small publisher that allows me to do this. However, I would like to see my books Internationally distributed in bookstores--and a film made about my Soap Opera Life. So if you are an Editor, Literary Agent, or Filmmaker, I need you!

My new writing consists of 2 projects at this time. One is my 2nd "Selah" fantasy novel, set in a place much like New Zealand (I use Maori words & culture for Selah's exciting new adventure).

The other is my 3rd nonfiction book called Tomorrow in New Zealand. It tells what I have never written about before--my life as a Spy and an Abused Wife (yes, even through cancer and chemotherapy I was abused in all ways by my soon to be ex-husband).

Tomorrow in New Zealand chronicles my New Adventure (better than a Soap Opera or Dramatic Film) that began in the fall of 2005 when an Internet Scam Artist found my Website. I was drawn into International Intrigue, losing money and working with a division of the F.B.I. and U.S. Department of Justice to find and convict the Perpetrators of a massive Internet Scam (imagine me using my newspaper reporter's digital recorder to record phone calls from Europe, meeting with an agent who flew from Washington, D.C. to San Bernardino, and holding a stolen $50,000.00 check in my gloved hand . . . )

That did not go over well with my controlling, abusive husband. During lunch before Christmas, 2006, I told him,

"By the way, that listening equipment you found belongs to the government. I am working with the F.B.I."

You should have sea the look on his face. He didn't believe I had a right to my own life.

Obviously, things got worse between us. Then in April, 2006, my daughter Jessica (age 13 1/2) kept pleading me to "Draw the line and leave Dad, for I am so tired of seeing him hurt you and us." So during a snowstorm on my California mountain, while Jessica and I were desperately trying to dig our car out of the snow-piled driveway, I thrust my shovel into a meter (3 feet) of fresh powder and declared,

"Here is your line."

Being a photographer, I took a photo of the clean, white line in the snow, which glowed blue on the edges. We packed all our treasures that night and flew off to New Zealand where we had been spending the summers (their winters) since 2003.

Jonathan, age 11 (who had slapped me in the face in a crowded Apple Computer store that Christmas and yelled, "Dad is head of the house and you are just a Dog!") finally tearfully told me,

"My dad is mean, and if I don't leave, I will be like him."

He came with us.

We stayed in New Zealand for over 7 months, often on the edge of poverty, trying to live off my meager writing money (I really do need a bigger publisher!).

While there, I was doing our laundry in a local laundromat, and a man appeared, seemingly from nowhere. Tall and thin, he looked down at me with eyes as green as a New Zealand fern and said (in the lovely, lilting Kiwi accent),

"I'm a good listener. You could cry on my shoulder."

(I obviously looked more stressed than the average laundromat user trying to figure out how to put the coins into the machines).

He was wearing a soft blue shirt and puffy navy-colored vest, and I wanted him to wrap me in his strong arms and make everything better.

And so he did (he had appeared through his secret door between the laundromat and dry cleaners, which he owns). We fell in love Hollywood-style (stars, fireworks, music, adventure, drama, and all).

Ironically, upon our departure from California I had sworn to be celibate the rest of my life, believing True Love did not exist. Yet it did. My new Love showed me places I had never seen on the South Island, held my hand while exploring places like Mount Cook Valley, and kissed me atop the vistas of the local gorge--the sheep-covered green hills of New Zealand around me like the refuge of his embrace.

The children and I settled into a small Mauri-named town where we lived in a rented house and made friends with the neighbors. Jest & Jon went to public schools, uniform and all. I tried to write while fighting the United States' effort (via my estranged husband) to force us back to California through the court system. We never hid out. I even had a California lawyer to represent me at all court hearings.

We lost the Hague Convention, narrowly (though the children told the truth about their father's many-faced abuses, they were not taken seriously enough. The judge said that, if they returned to their "place of usual residence" they would "probably cope and face only a slight risk of abuse").

So Jessica and Jonathan became the first children in New Zealand history to Appeal their own case (to stay in New Zealand) in the High Court, with their own NZ Ministry of Justice-appointed Barrister (lawyer who wears a black robe and argues before the judge). The High Court was very clean, orderly, and impressive, with shiny wood bars, glass water canisters, and paintings of former judges in curled white wigs (they just got rid of the wigs a year ago).

However, for all the effort of my expensive NZ lawyers, the children's Barrister, a psychologist, and a psychiatrist, we lost at the High Court on "Points of Law" (what about Justice?).

We were given an armed escort all the way back to LAX in November, 2006. Two Senior Inspectors from the San Bernardino D.A.'s Office met us at the airport, gave me a lecture, took our passports, and put my two scared children into an unmarked police car for transport to a neutral location. That was better than their first "deal" to hand the kids over to their father at the airport and give me nothing but telephone contact with them--conditions the NZ judge said were ridiculous (I tried to tell her how California courts worked), and I did not HAVE to return to California, but it was only a matter of time until I was "on a Felony Child Abduction Warrant" . . .

Imagine the San Bernardino County Sheriffs trying to find us in the remote bush of New Zealand . . .

So I voluntarily came back to my former mountain community, labeled an "Adulteress" and "Sinner" by my former church for falling in love with a Kiwi (though my estranged "husband" took out Legal Separation" papers a week after we left, before even trying to get the children returned, and we were separated by 10,500 kilometers, roughly 8,000 miles).

Now back in the California mountains, I am again on the edge of poverty, having rented a house still absent of children, going through the court system that has labeled me a "Flight Risk" (though I have no passport, money, or desire to abandon my children for whose custody I am fighting in San Bernardino Family Court).

The D.A. never charged me with a crime. In fact, they no longer wanted our passports and handed them over to my estranged husband's pompous lawyer who made a great show of putting them in his pocket after he insulted me in court.

This is a dramatic story--especially considering my tragic childhood (losing my entire family--hence going to New Zealand instead of anywhere in the U.S.--getting a very rare form of cancer and chemotherapy when Jonathan was just a baby, suffering nerve damage and pain from the chemotherapy, having miscarriages, being an abused wife, working as a temporary Spy, etc.).

My story reads better than a Soap Opera, and I wish I were making up most of it.

If you can help me tell my story to the world, please email me or call. And if you would like to help with legal costs or have any ideas about my case, feel free to contact me. I'm open to all suggestions.

Thank You,

Lonna Lisa Lynch