There is a story behind the story, but to keep it brief...
In midsummer, I was approached by a group of writer friends I admire: a bunch of wonderful, talented women, all published with devoted followers. These women concentrate on romance, but in differing areas of the genre: some focus on the historical realm, others contemporary, paranormal, erotic, you name it.
Anyway. They invited me to participate in what I thought was a collection of short stories for the holidays. I was honored, and after picking my jaw up from the floor, I agreed. I’ve never been published in print before, and it’s been a long-deferred dream of mine.
Read the fine print, Nonny. They were asking you to contribute a NOVEL for a collection for the holidays. Whoops.
They agreed to let me off the hook once I stopped hyperventilating, as I only had a few short months to get my Muse back from wherever she had buggered off to, but no. I am stubborn, and was not going to let this chance slip past me...
…but I had no plot, very little time, and my personal life was falling apart at a terrifying clip…
After several false starts, I came up with the above. It is available now in paperback, and will be available as an ebook on November 30th. (That is hard and fast as per the roll-out agreement with the group, but it will be available through the Kindle Unlimited program for those of you who are subscribers.)
So, for those who have enjoyed my little scribblings in the past, I have this offering for you! It’s not fandom (and although the male protagonist’s name is Henry, he is not Henry Cavill…but if you squint, I suppose you could envision him being cast as such…? It was never my intent!) but it’s still my writing, still under a nom de plume. Because REASONS.
So, all the news from Nonny that I will inflict upon you at the moment. Carry on.
To any of you that sacrificed your hard earned currency to purchase same:
I apologize. I am prostrating myself in front of you. Please forgive me
It is/was a HOT MESS.
Formatting. It’s a thing. A thing that I fell down on, and by the way, it wasn’t the ONLY thing I fell down on...
There were a LOT of things that just went wrong. I fired the proofreader, the copyeditor, and just about everyone else...except OH WAIT, all of those idiots...were ME.
I won’t go into painful detail, but I was going through A LOT at the time. My dad was in hospice, and I was the coordinator for just about everything. Was I supposed to be? Not really, as I live on the east coast and my father on the gulf coast...and the relationship between my maternal unit and I was badly strained. But my sister, whom I have a great relationship with, doesn’t speak “medical” and Hurricane Ida was a bitch, and...well. I couldn’t do everything, after all. Mistakes were made, no matter how badly I tried to clean up the manuscript. I won’t punish myself too badly. I just couldn’t do it all. My dad died in my arms on November 2, 2021, at 6:35 a.m. No, I’m not over it yet. I keep thinking I am, but I’m not. Still, things are a hell of a lot better than they were. Take my word for it. I could write a whole book on the last night of his life, but no one would want to read that.
(And that wasn’t ALL that was going on, but that was the biggest alligator closest to the canoe. God, 2021 was a complete 2020...)
But YOU, the reader, paid for a novel that was a HOT MESS. You deserve better. I am trying to make amends.
I have gone through and identified the errors on the printed pages and am in the process of keying them into the file. Then, I am going to upload them as long as Amazon will allow me to do so*. No characters will behave any differently. Henry will not suddenly decide to shave his head and join a cult. Aubrey will not go skinny dipping in the Hudson River at noon with Peter live-streaming the event. BUT there won’t be dropped words, miscellaneous punctuation errors that made me scream in horror, or empty spaces in the text for NO GOD DAMNED REASON.
If you purchased an ebook, the corrected text should be available for you to upload at no additional fee.
If you purchased a hard copy, please dm me.
My sincere apologies. When I let the next book out into the wild, I will NOT let it go without having at least one set of independent eyes go over it to make sure this never happens again...
Anyone interested in being a beta reader? Proofreader? I know a GREAT publishing house...
*Should Amazon be obdurate and hiss Suffer, foolish author I will go to plan B, and find a work around...because if my Daddy taught me anything, there is ALWAYS a workaround...
