Happy Tuesday! SAVING HEARTS hits digital shelves today – check out the Books page for full buy links – and while I’m sad to say goodbye (for now) to the men of Atlanta Skyline, I’m excited for readers to finally meet its alpha heroine, Erin, and Brendan, Skyline’s neuro-atypical goalkeeper. You can catch my interview on the HEA blog to learn a little more about the future potential of the series.
This release day finds me in my new home in Houston, so it’s perhaps apropos that as I reflect on the process of writing SAVING HEARTS I realized that huge chunks of it were drafted in airport lounges and hotels. I had two trips to London and one to Amsterdam in the space of about ten weeks, and the overnight flights to and from Johannesburg often left me with a spare most-of-a-day on either end of work training. Here are some fun facts about my own setting for these scenes:
- Erin’s trip to snoop Brendan’s house was written in the airport lounge at OR Tambo.
- I wrote the backstory to Brendan’s neuro-atypicality in a hotel in Baker Street.
- Erin’s visit to Brendan’s hometown was drafted at a spare desk in my company’s London office.
- Erin realized she was falling for Brendan while I was in Schiphol airport.
- Brendan fell in love with Erin when I was perched on a stool in the lounge at Heathrow’s terminal 5, with a view over the security lines.
- I wrote the final scene in the cafe at my gym in Johannesburg, where I knew there’d be no wifi to distract me.
As you can see, Brendan and Erin traveled thousands of miles with me in the couple of months it took to write their story. Maybe that’s why they have an extra special place in my heart. They’re both deeply flawed and prone to awful mistakes and misjudgments, even ethical transgressions, but in the end they want nothing more than to do right by each other, and in the process find that they’re right for each other. I love them and this book to bits, and I hope you will, too.
And in the midst of all of this, tomorrow sees the release of my tenth book! Defending Hearts hits digital bookshelves tomorrow and I hope Kate and Oz will find their way into readers’ hearts with the same stubborn insistence they found their way into mine.
Happy September! Today marks the end of the Homefront Trilogy re-release as THUNDER RUNNING hits digital shelves. Authors – like parents – aren’t supposed to have favorites but, full disclosure, Chance and Tara are high on my list. These two messy people find imperfect perfection with each other, and I just love them.