New Release

I am so excited about my upcoming release -- TRUSTING LOVE.  It has been sent off to the editor, a release date has been set (December 10, 2013) and I am working with my cover artist to get an awesome cover, and for this book I have started working with a new marketing team.  Good things are happening!

What a process it is to get a book to the point where it is ready for release.  Writing alone is a huge process.  The steps it takes to produce a book that you hope your readers will enjoy and want to share with others. For me my writing process may be a bit different than other authors.  My first draft consists of a skeleton draft really.  I get the basic plot out and don't edit at all as I write.

The second pass through is spent putting in details, description and missing elements needed for those never ending plot twists required in suspense.  The third and fourth pass is then spent diving into the edits, changing point of views, fixing gaps in timelines or plot structure before making a final read through.  As I hit send and it goes off to my editor, I cross my fingers and hope she likes it.

Once it is off, the excitement of it all begins.  Setting the release date, working with marketing and the process of selecting picture ideas to send to the cover artists.  There is nothing like the feeling of first seeing your cover, and then the excitement all over again when the book is in your hand, a finished project.

So what is TRUSTING LOVE about?  Good question.  Here is just a little hint of what you can expect.

CHLOE WILDER is newly pregnant and running from her abusive boyfriend.  She needs a home more than ever before.  Chloe takes refuge in Arden, Maine - a sleepy, coastal town where she finally thinks she can be safe.

JAYDEN PETERSON abandoned his career as a city cop after accidentally shooting a child. Jayden quickly agrees to fill his father’s shoes as Arden’s police chief. Determined to protect his loved ones and unsure if he can ever pull his gun again, Jayden is relieved to stay where the worst crime that will ever happen is jaywalking - or so he thinks.

Love and Vulnerability

As I start plotting out a couple more books, and as always life events tend to shape that process, I start looking at what is it about love that makes people vulnerable? In my own life, I have been been through good and bad, like most people. I have moments that I thought I was so totally in love that I didn't believe anything could penetrate that and destroy it, but as there have also been times I have been hurt I now make a conscious decision to keep my heart guarded from that which makes me vulnerable.

What's that moment in time that you consciously decide you can't take the hurt or pain any more and never want to go through it again....yet in the back of your mind you still hope for that happily ever after and the one true love that will always be there for you. As a writer, I get to write that ending in my stories and portray that hope for that type of love through my stories.

I have spent a great deal of time in the past week thinking about this. About the risks of putting your heart out there after you have been hurt. We all want to be that priority in someone's life, be the one that they think of first thing when they wake up and last thing when they go to bed, be that one that brings a smile to their face during the day just because they are thinking of you. How do you protect your heart from the hurt that could follow when you make yourself vulnerable.

In The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis penned a lesson on the danger of holding one’s heart too tightly. He writes:

    To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

After stumbling across the above statement, and doing an exhausting amount of thinking on this subject this week, I have come to the conclusion that it is much better to put your heart out there and run the risk of getting it broken once again than to have it become unbreakable, impenetrable and irredeemable.  I would rather love and be vulnerable than hide my heart away in the name of protection.