The Closest Stranger

About the Book

This story follows the last book of, "The Closest Stranger" when Amy Hill is released from Oakcrest Mental Institution. After spending her whole teenage life under the instituions control without a clue of why she was there in the first place; she finds herself now having to fend for herself in the real world without any knowledge of how life is supposed to go. After a few days of struggling on her own she decides to search for answers by finding her birth parents. She discovers her decision was probably not the best choice to make as she starts to reveal disturbing secrets of her family as her own demons start to surface.

About the Author

My name is Shane Ballon and I live in a small town in Colorado with my beautiful wife, Julie and our 4 children. Kryste which is 6, Lyrik is 4, Rythem is 2 and the youngest is Jazz which is only 3 months. I also have a daughter in Louisiana and her name is Harmony 4. Dexter is the family protector which is a year old pittbull and is extremely over protective of the kids.

I was raised in Chalmette, Louisiana with my mom who raised me as a single mother; which I know was a chore in itself as she was always working double shifts and multiple jobs to put food on the table. The down fall to that was I was alone alot of times and isolation in a way became a friend of mine. My dad was never a factor in my life which was a shame, but that is life sometimes for you. My mother was a hard working woman who always tried to raise me with respect and dignity even though we were not always in the best of siutations in the places we lived. Chalmette was a dump when I was raised and the violence was high. My mom wanted to take me away from there, but given the circumstances we had to make due with what we had. She had 1 goal for me in life and that was for me to get my high school diploma, but I failed at that; along with many other things. I dropped out of school at 8th grade and enrolled myself in a military program called, "Youth Challenge Program". I got my GED there and learned alot about myself.

It leaned me to join the military where I spent 4 years in the Army and took a tour to Iraq in 05' to 06'. It was a hard time and to top it off Katrina hit my home and the government refused to let me go back and help out with my family and my community. When I got back home I found out that I lost everything I have ever had and to make matters worst "FIMA" refused to compensate me because I missed their precious "deadline" to file a claim. It made my opinion of our government that much more negative and for the longest time I was enraged by how I was treated at that time. I could not understand how a junkies were getting 10,000 dollars and I was fighting a war and had no choice in the matter. In a way it inspired alot of my writing with a sort of outlet of my anger and pain. My military experience was not the greatest and it also led to my divorce of my first wife, but life goes on.

When I got out I started playing music and got really intrigued by the guitar and recording, but after having a few kids the music kind of got pushed aside just because of the time. It killed me at first because I did not want to give it up, but over time I found that I started writing these short stories of things I saw and wanted to control. Writing became a big part of my life and once I had started I could not stop. It was a really postive change in my life and now is a career I want to pursue.

My writings are alot of personal experiences and me seeing some of the ugly in the world we live. My goal is to entertain readers that look for excitment in killer thrillers and also for them to see how other people may live and their complications in life. Everyone has problems, but sometimes when we step aside and see other people's; it just sometimes makes us grateful for the things we do have. Over the years there have been plenty of things that I wanted to do and to control and these novels give me a chance to create different worlds where I can have complete control on what happens and how it happens.