I Have Good News and Bad News...
Actually what I have is good news, bad news, more bad news, good news (I hope) and more bad news.
First of all, I want to thank everyone who read Time to Shine, my first standalone novel and my first Christmas romance. I appreciate all the love the book received and I’m so glad people took a chance on Landon and Casey. I’m proud of the book, I love seeing it in stores, and I look forward to writing more standalone books. 2023 was an exciting year for me and my writing career, between the success of Time to Shine, doing my first in-person author event in London, and seeing Heated Rivalry get a paperback release.
Now for some good news: I finally have release dates for the paperback editions of Tough Guy, Common Goal, and Role Model! All three will be published in 2024 in mass market paperback format (same size as the rest of the Game Changers series). Tough Guy will be out in May, Common Goal in June, and Role Model in July. All three will have very minor edits just to clean them up a bit. If you need examples, for Tough Guy I fixed a couple of typos, replaced the mention of Ezra Miller to Cillian Murphy, and rewrote a small chunk of dialogue that I felt was insensitive about addiction. Barely anything, really, but I’m glad to have the chance to fix little things that were bothering me.
The bad news is that 2024 will be the first year I don’t have a new book release since 2018. I’m a slow writer in general, and there are some things I’ll get into in a minute that are making me a bit slower. Quality is important to me and I know I write stronger books when I give myself the time I need to write them. I hate the feeling of forcing myself to write something that isn’t working, and it never results in anything good.
Which brings me to my next piece of bad news. I’ve decided to put the Luca Haas book (Game Changers book 7) on hold for a bit. To be clear, I’m not canceling this book. I spent most of 2023 working on it, and I have no plans to scrap it because frankly that is too much work to waste. Also, I really like some of what I wrote. Overall, though, it wasn’t what I felt like writing at this moment. I think part of the problem is that Luca is a very young character, and Time to Shine was also about young characters. I also feel a lot of pressure when it comes to writing Game Changers books compared to standalones, and I think I need to step away from that pressure for a bit. I know a lot of people are excited for Luca’s book, so I promise I will finish it as soon as possible.
But, good news, I am working on a new standalone male/male hockey romance that I don’t have details for yet, but I will let you know three vague things for now:
I absolutely love writing this book and these characters;
This is going to be different in a lot of ways from my other books, and one of those ways is that the two MCs are retired NHL players, rather than active players;
It’s my first real second chance romance.
I’m making no promises, but I am optimistic that both the standalone book and the Luca Haas book could be released in 2025.
My final bit of bad news, and one of the reasons writing has been a struggle these past few months, is that in the summer I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. It wasn’t a huge shock—anyone who has met me over the last year, or even watched a video of me, possibly noticed the constant tremor in my right arm and hand. It was surprising because I have no family history of Parkinson’s, and I was only 42 when diagnosed, but as it became clear the tremor wasn’t going away, and as I developed new symptoms, I made my peace with the fact that the diagnosis was inevitable. I’ve learned a lot about the disease over the past few months, and have a neurologist to oversee my medication and a very knowledgeable physiotherapist to help me train my body for future movement and balance problems, as well as a psychologist to help manage the mental health issues that commonly come with Parkinson’s. I am doing very well so far on all fronts, and I’m optimistic about my future. As far as how it’s affecting my writing, besides my being pretty overwhelmed by this life-changing diagnosis, mechanical things like typing, writing with a pen, and using a mouse have become challenging. I feel bad for my editor haha.
I’m sharing the news about my diagnosis for two main reasons. The first is that I plan to continue to do author events and videos and so forth, and the tremor is getting more obvious. I want people to know what’s causing it. I also want people to know that this is the reason I can’t annotate books or write lengthy personalizations. Just writing my name legibly can be a challenge. The second reason is that I think it’s maybe good to be open about these things, sometimes, because it could be helpful to other people who are going through the same thing (or something similar). Because I knew almost nothing about Parkinson’s before I was diagnosed, I like the idea of finding some community around it. And also, I suppose, there’s no reason to hide it. It’s a part of who I am now, and it always will be.
But anyway, let’s focus on the books! I’m excited to have paperbacks coming for the rest of the Game Changers series, I’m very into the book I’m working on now, and I look forward to finishing Luca’s story as well. I’ll also be traveling to Edinburgh in September for the RARE convention there, which I am really looking forward to. I’m also already looking at in-person events for 2025. Thanks again for all your support and I appreciate your patience as I take a little extra time this year to create new books that I can be proud of.