If you've recently followed me, here's a story about long, long ago (in publishing terms!)
My publishing career began in 2009 with novellas. Wolf Signs, Tidal Wave, Rocky Mountain Heat (which was originally only 30,000 words long!)
After writing a number of these shorter, more concise stories, I asked my editor what I should do to improve as a writer. She suggested writing longer books. It would give me more room to play with plot and character development. Great idea! I set out to write a stand-alone short contemporary.
Looking back, the strangest part about writing something twice as long as usual was how much talking they did! In a novella, there's a lot of action, and things move quickly. In a novel, there's time to sit and have a cup of coffee while they chat.
It was a challenge, but it was also fun, and I got to add in tons of interesting twists. There's a big family with a strange family tradition of naming everyone some variation of “Max”. There are the twins, who are close as siblings, but very different in character. There's a touch of mystery, and there are typical real-life situations with friends that don't always go smoothly.
In the end, I had what I thought was a fun, super sexy (very sexy) stand-alone story. One and done!
But then, Turn It On came out, and readers really wanted to know more about the brother to the heroine, who was clearly already in a happily-ever-after of his own. I'd even given him the unfortunate name of Junior!
Writing his story meant going back in time, which meant the books were published out of chronological order. I'm convinced fixing this problem is why I write chronologically whenever possible.
The result is now the books ARE in order. They're very sexy, and while they're older books, they're still about chosen family and finding the person who not only believes in you but is willing to do everything to help bring you to the point you believe in yourself.
If you haven't yet met Maxwell Junior (ugh! lol) and Natasha in Turn It Up, or Maxine and Ryan in Turn It On, I hope you'll check them out.
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