I got divorced in mid-2017 and published my last book (until the Summer of 2024!) in September of the same year. I’d already written it, it was in a series I loved, and was book 3, I’d already started working on book 4 because I’m disciplined and driven. I just had one teensy little problem. I had soured on love and romance. I mean bad. I hated the insta-love you read about in romance novels. I hated the happily-ever-afters, okay, not really but I did think they took a ton more work than just getting a shoe to fit- sorry Cinderella.
My book stalled like a plane at an air show only this was a cover the kid’s eyes and turn away because that was not going to end well, kind of stalled. But I had 3 books of a 5 book series done and no clue what to do about it. My characters made it easy and flat-out stopped talking to me. Couldn’t really blame them, I was sad and angry and not a lot of fun to be around.
I even stopped reading romance! Seriously that alone should have made me find a therapist but it didn’t. So I decided that what I needed was a shot of real honest-to-God romance in my life. OMG, Big. Mist. ACHE! I am now convinced that most dating apps qualify as a form of self-harm, at least the way I was doing it. Dating isn’t exactly easy when you aren’t a kid anymore. A little story to explain my drift. I went back to college at the ripe old age of 30. I still had to write an entrance essay- it was a really good school I was trying to get into. I wrote my essay on how writing an entrance essay when you are 18 is difficult because you don’t feel like you’ve done anything to write about yet. Writing one at 30 you’ve done plenty to write about but you feel like you need to apologize for most of it. I was told the essay got passed around the office because every woman in there thought it was hysterical. I got in, graduated with a degree in Architecture because it was the hardest program to get into- I’m kind of competitive shit like that.
Anyway, dating. I was talking about dating. Dating when you have some water under the bridge and don’t actually need a guy to cover the bills and whatever fantasies you whip up in your head, and you have some feminist leanings (See went to very good college above) makes it harder to go to Disney World so to speak, that is, suspend your disbelief long enough to get sucked in by all of the happy juice. After finding the second guy who was in love with a younger woman who wouldn’t have dated him for love or money I happened to look a lot like. I figured it was me and got some therapy. Okay, a lot of therapy. Then the pandemic hit, and both my parents died- unrelated but I am convinced they are locked in a room together in hell “No Exit” style. Probably, another reason I needed therapy.
Post Pandemic I really decided I needed to get my proverbial act together. I was sick and tired of being crazy and tired. So I started working on myself at a whole other level. Part of that was journaling and lo and behold a miracle happened. I remembered how much I love writing because spoiler alert, I work out a lot of baggage through my characters. Hey, it is a whole lot easier to write about stuff you could never say out loud when your characters do it.
Oh, and love? I decided it takes work and I’m good with that. It has taken me a rough couple of years to love me, I’m good with taking at least that long to love someone else. So my stories show case people who are figuring it out, who are willing to put in the work, who make mistakes and say ‘I’m sorry’ along the way. That insta-love might show up but it is more likely to be shown as lust (because my books have always had a fair amount of sex in them) that gets them over the hump and look for love there. In short, I am back to reading and writing romance again and don’t think I’ve ever been happier.
So, I have that book 4 getting proof read, a book 1 in a new series is getting edited, book 5 in the Regency series and book 2 in the new series are being written with a 1000 words between them DAILY! Oh, and I’m plotting another new series with my writer daughter who was 14 when I started the Regency one, cue feeling very old. So stuff is a popping here, hang on, it’s going to be a wild ride!