I'm reachable at mlavoraperry @ mlavoraperry . com

My other social networking sites and blogs (MySpace, FaceBook, LiveJournal, etc) are listed here.

I'm a spouse to my children's dad, a daughter to wonderful parents, and have a heap of awesome relatives and friends.

I can now justify dying my hair black since it's no longer "prematurely gray" like it was back in the day. It's just gray gray. But dye it? Some things I just don't do.

What I do is write fiction and non-fiction books for preteens and teens. My first one, TANEESHA NEVER DISPARAGING (Wisdom Publications, Sept 2008), is part of a series of middle-grade and young adult novels about preteens and teens who live in the same urban community. TANEESHA NEVER DISPARAGING details the drama that an 11-year-old urban Buddhist girl goes through daily, which includes being bullied by a teenage "ogre" girl.

Floyd Cooper illustrated the cover for TANEESHA NEVER DISPARAGING-- which is cool because he's won awards for his book illustrations.

For details and reviews of Taneesha Never Disparaging go to my website

I've coauthored a truth-telling, 7-book series titled TEEN SISTERS' HEALTH: A BODY, MIND, & SPIRIT WELLNESS GUIDE FOR GIRLS OF COLOR with Linda Bradley, MD of the Cleveland Clinic. She's like Super Woman in a white coat. We had a publisher,but they closed shop. So now literary agent Susan Schulman represents Teen Sisters' Health--she's the agent of the author who wrote the turned-into-a-Disney-movie book, Holes,Louis Sachar.

For excerpts and more about Teen Sisters' Health go to TeenSistersHealth.com.

I'm the Executive Editor of this wonderful online health information company called UPRIS (Universal Patient Record Information System). Their mission is to reduce the health disparities that lead to too many people within minority populations suffering from preventive illnesses that lead to early death. They're fabulous to work for.

In 1995 American Greetings hired me as their first African American Greeting card writer. I worked there as part of the writing staff until 2002. Then I dabbled in and out as a freelancer and/or part-timer.