"Ruined is about a teenage girl in New York named Rebecca who abruptly in the middle of the school year is sent to live with people she doesn't know and she doesn't understand why. When she's down in New Orleans she befriends a ghost (Lisette) and realizes she is much more involved in the ghost's history than she originally thought."

"It was after Hurricane Katrina and I went to see a tarot card reader who was a bit crazy. He told me he was freaked out because there were ghosts everywhere in New Orleans. He said the storm had dislodged lots of ghosts and that these ghosts were now homeless. I started thinking about a ghost who lost their home and were forced to roam the city, and that is where the idea of Lisette the ghost came from. This was the spark of the book, though that plot is not what actually ended up being the end result."