• Age: 11 to 15
• Grade: 6 to 10

In Fierce Shorts Bundle, Vol. 2 authors Jo Treggiari and Chad Pelley bring you heartbreaking yet uplifting true accounts of friendship and what happens when a friend commits suicide.

Love You Like Suicide

Set against the backdrop of the 1980s California punk scene, Love You Like Suicide explores the dark side of growing up. Author Jo Treggiari writes frankly about a period in her youth when she was addicted to drugs and living in a derelict neighbourhood.

After a near-fatal accident, Jo is determined to clean up and start a fresh, new life. But there's one thing she can't leave behind: a tender friendship, on the brink of being lost forever.

Love You Like Suicide is a gritty, true account of an adolescent who struggles against the odds to make a better life for herself.

Partial proceeds go to HeartWood Centre for Community Youth Development.

Before I Was Me

When someone close dies, especially if it’s sudden, there’s often a strong desire to talk to that person one last time. To reminisce and say “I love you.” Or maybe get angry and ask why.

In Before I Was Me author Chad Pelley places readers in his shoes as he reflects on high school incidents that continue to resonate with him years afterward. Drawn from the memory of several events, he writes about suicide with direct yet breathtaking prose.

Not simply a tale of a boy and the girl he still misses sixteen years later, Before I Was Me is also a touching story about loss, grief and coming to terms with the past.

Partial proceeds go toward Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention.

M - Mature 17 and up: May contain sexual content, intense violence and/or strong language. Alcohol - Reference to alcohol use Blood - Depiction of blood Drugs - Reference to drugs and/or drug use Self-harm scenes - Includes depictions or discussion about suicide, cutting and/or other self-harm Sexual Content - Mention or description of sex or a sexual act Strong language - Frequent use of profanity

Chad Pelley’s fiction has been recognized by more than a dozen literary awards. His debut novel, Away from Everywhere, was a Coles bestseller, won the NLAC’s CBC Emerging Artist award, and was shortlisted for both the ReLit and CAA Emerging Writer awards, and a film adaptation starring Jason Priestley and Shawn Doyle was filmed in 2015. His second novel, Every Little Thing, was shortlisted for the ReLit Award, and Canada Reads winner Lisa Moore called it “Stylistically fresh and can’t-put-it-down compelling.” He has appeared alongside acclaimed authors at festivals such as IFOA,Vancouver Writers’ Festival, and Writers at Woody Point. His short fiction has won several awards, and has been published in anthologies, textbooks, and journals. He’s taught creative writing at Memorial University, founded Salty Ink.com, and has written for Quill & Quire, The National Post, Globe and Mail, the Telegraph-Journal, and Atlantic Books Today. He is currently the founding editor of The Overcast: Newfoundland’s Alternative Newspaper.

Chad Pelley's profile page

Jo Treggiari was born in London, England, and raised in Canada. She spent many years in Oakland, California, and New York, where she trained as a boxer, wrote for a punk magazine, and owned a gangster rap/indie rock record label. Her novel Ashes, Ashes, a YA post-apocalyptic adventure published by Scholastic Press, was a multiple award nominee and bestseller. Her acclaimed novella Love You Like Suicide, appeared in the Fierce Ink Press anthology Becoming Fierce: Teen Stories IRL and as a limited edition of the long-running zine Cometbus. Her most recent YA novels are Blood Will Out, a psychological thriller, published by Penguin Teen (2018), and a second thriller, The Grey Sisters (Penguin Teen, 2019), which was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary award and was shortlisted for an Arthur Ellis award.

Jo Treggiari's profile page