mark cowlin

Angelina believes that she is an angel and is about to jump off a belfry to prove it. Gerald Sparks, two years older, is the most famous teen actor on the planet. He has chronic heart failure and has decided to end it all in a blaze of glory rather than fade out as a living ghost on the front pages of the tabloid press.
They meet as they are about to jump, but pull back from the brink and pay one final visit to a place that is important to each of them. Only ever one step ahead of the chasing paparazzi, they journey across the landscape of their past until they have to face up to the real cause of their demise. But this only puts them in a seemingly impossible, and agonizing, predicament.
The story is presented as Angelina's novelized memoir, with five short present-day narratives inserted into the text that resolve the main storyline. Thematically the novel explores how young adults cope with fractured family relationships, love and loss, the transformation of their childhood into adulthood, as well as how teenagers interact with celebrity culture. The novel also addresses the impact of social media, and how we use them to control the flow of information about ourselves.
My website contains pages devoted to Angel Heirs that speak with the voices and photographs of the characters, creating an extended multi-layered experience for the reader.