It’s been so long since my last release (how is it nearly Valentine’s Day already?) that I belong in author jail.
The delay has partially been because life has been crazy between my kids bringing home all the crud this cold season and seemingly endless snow days here in frigid Minneapolis. We surpassed our average winter snowfall this season in mid-January, and at this point I’m pretty sure my yoga instructor is pretty sick of my requests to do “any asana that will help heal shoveling injuries” 🤣 (But seriously, it’s hard to have good shoveling ergonomics when the snow banks on either side of your driveway are nearly as tall as you are!)
But the bigger reason for the gap between releases has been that I’ve been juggling multiple books at once because there are just too many stories that I want to share. Monster Moon, aka the”smutty Halloween novella” that I started in September, has turned into a longer and more complex story than I anticipated. Instead of one OTT possessive hero, there are two and boy oh boy are these men dramatic. I hope to have that book out within the next month or two, but you won’t have to wait that long for a new release…
I’m currently wrapping up work on a Valentine’s Day novella, Caught by Cupid. The hero, Sebastien, is one of the most ruthless cupids in the Cupid Cartel. But the heroine, Melanie, may very well prove to be his match. Keep your eyes peeled for an excerpt and cover reveal later his week… unless I just decide to release it first 😉
I’ve also been busy revamping some previously published novellas and novels from a former pen name—making them spicier and commissioning new covers. More details on that later, but I should have quite a few releases coming out this spring, especially since Sydney and I are also working on some more cowrites.
That brings me to what is possibly my biggest author goof to date—the scene we forgot to write in The Mobster’s Angel. Sydney and I had been friends for years. And we were so excited to finally write and publish our first story together that we mayyyybe rushed the release a bit. It wasn’t until an eagle-eyed reviewer complained that we realized what we’d left out…
Cunnilingus 🙊🙉🙈
I was so mortified that I was ready to pull the book and rewrite it to include the missing oral sex scene. Luckily, Sydney talked me down off that ledge lol, and we agreed to just move on and learn from our mistake. But for nearly a year, it’s nagged at me that that moment was missing from Jack and Olivia’s love story. But today, a scene came to me… so instead of working on Caught by Cupid, I dropped everything and wrote “The Lavender Lexus,” relieved that Olivia would finally get hers and praying that she can forgive us for initially skipping over that critical scene.
Don’t let the title mislead you. This isn’t a story about our couple getting a new car, although a Lexus does feature prominently in the story. The title is also a bit of an inside joke for Fountains of Wayne fans. The story opens with a scenario that I’m guessing a few parents can relate to: drama in the school drop-off line. When I was thinking about what kind of car the woman Jack is so furious with would be driving, a Fountains of Wayne song from high school, “Denise,” immediately came to mind. Not a huge deal, but it felt fun to give a nod to one of my all-time favorite bands, especially since their main songwriter died from Covid during the spring of 2020 when he was only 52. Most have never heard of Adam Schlesinger, but he was a pop genius (and the writer of the theme song for the movie That Thing You Do); the world is definitely worse without him in it.
So hug the people you love and don’t forget to tell them you love them every chance you get. We never know how much time we have left. I promise that going forward, I’ll try to use my time better and get you these stories faster. In the meantime, “The Lavender Lexus” will be landing in the inboxes of my mailing list subscribers tomorrow morning. (If you’re reading this at a later date, don’t worry. New subscribers get a link to a page with all bonus content when they sign up, and I’ll try to remember to also include that link in every email I send.)