Taken From Home

“You call CPS right now and tell her to take me back to my mom!” screams a big brown eyed little girl.

She’s hurt, confused and just wants to go home. It wasn’t her choice. She didn’t want to leave her real family in the first place, but Child Protective Services swooped in and took her anyway, leaving a trail of tears in their wake.

I was a foster parent for four years in Texas. I can vouch for CPS, they want to protect children. According to DFPS regional statistics for, 15,924 children ages 0-18 were taken from their home and placed in a Texas foster home just this month!  Regardless of intentions, it still hurts the kids caught in the cross hairs. Within the first hour of being taken from their home, the foster child is with people they don’t know, heading to live with more people they don’t know. A million questions are funneling through the mind of the foster child. Where am I going? Why do I have to leave? Are these people nice? Will they like me? What about my real family?

Over the next few months, the confused foster child will be moved into a foster home, enrolled into a new school, and taken to weekly visits with their real family only to be torn away again once time is up. The emotional roller coaster is never-ending. Isn’t it hard enough to be a teen living at home with your parents who never understand you and are way too strict? Imagine being taken. Everything changes and you don’t have any control. Life is turned upside down. Did I mention foster parents can call CPS and have you sent to another foster home if anything goes wrong?

The main character in One Prince, Two Kingdoms knows the challenge of foster care. He’s been in five foster homes since CPS took him. He’s always trying to protect the weak and be the man his parents taught him to be, but no matter how hard he tries, trouble haunts him. It would be easy to give up, but Johnny refuses. He continues to search for his parents and face the heartache at each dead.  With each mistake, he learns there’s power in his choices. They can lead him further into the light or take him into the darkness.

You may be in a place where everything feels completely out of control, but remember there’s power in your choices. No one can tell you how to feel, talk, act, or treat others.

The choice is yours!

One Prince, Two Kingdoms

Name of Editor - Tate Publishing LLC

Name of cover designer - Tate Publishing LLC

Page # - 324 pages

Official genre of book - YA Paranormal Fantasy

My forehead’s throbbing. One minute this girl is yelling at me for giving up and the next, she’s laughing. Whiplash.

I squint my eyes at Danielle and whisper with my lips firmly in place, “I will never give up.”

Her voice is high and cheerful, “So what’s your plan?”

Johnny Boggs is a teen with trouble to spare who has learned one thing in life - trust no one. Paranoia befriends him as he moves into his fifth foster home and discovers no one appears as they are, his dreams are not just dreams, and he is supposedly the Prince of Shamayim.

On Johnny’s sixteenth birthday, fate requires him to leave the protection of this world but allows for him to choose to reign over the light or turn to the darkness. A vicious competition begins as two kingdoms fight for his loyalty while two beautiful girls, Danielle and Shay, fight for his attention. Time is running out; a decision must be made. Johnny finds it impossible to resist the beauty of his dreams, nor can he turn away from the one who has his heart.

Jana Grissom is a middle school teacher, an advocate for foster children and at-risk teens, a mom of two amazing teens, and married to Roy, her high-school sweetheart. Jana holds a Master of Education in Administration and Policy Studies and offers professional development in bullying identification, prevention, and intervention. She is available to speak to students at secondary schools about the writing process or bring a message that challenges them to S.T.O.P. bullying and suicide. Jana is a Texas girl who loves the outdoors, flip-flops, chocolate, and sweet tea. In her spare time, she loves escaping to imaginary worlds through the magic of books.