March 2017 was my last real blog post. That was three years ago… Wow. When I think about that, I feel a lot of shame. Back in 2015 when I was writing my first book, I committed to staying in touch with my readers and sadly after just two and a half years of blogging, I fell out of touch.

I’ve struggled for months with how to explain/apologize for why I’d fallen off the face of the earth, but every time I thought of something to say, it just sounded like an excuse. The truth is, my reasons probably are excuses. But excuses or not, I feel I owe you an explanation. So, I’ll do my best to share with you what has been going on in my life.

These last three years have been life-changing for me for one major reason, which I’ll get in to in a bit. But if we turn the clock back to spring 2017, I was knee deep in writing The Bear Gap Rebels.

This. Book. Was. Tough. I was slogging through (what felt like) a massive tome. I was way in over my head, and trudging through a plot so thick and convoluted it felt like my laptop was covered in honey. This was the longest book I’d written so far and I’d gotten to a point in my series plot that I really had to sit down and figure some stuff out. (Sorry, that’s as specific as I can be without giving anything away.) I couldn’t fake my through anymore. I had to have some solid answers to some big plot question marks I had.

Plot was only part of my problem. I was flooded with an ocean of insecure thoughts. In retrospect, this is extremely normal for writers. At the time, I was plagued with the thought that, maybe writing two books was just a fluke and I wouldn’t be able to write anything else or have another original thought. (Pst, original thoughts aren’t really a thing anyways. Go watch this Youtube video)

I was overwhelmed with doubt. It was taking me wayyyyyyy longer to finish this book than any of my others. The plot was a disaster, and no matter how many times I tried to re-plot, it still had issues. All of this amounted to me feeling less than adequate. Losing some of my confidence made me want to hide away from my blog. It’s hard to put content out there when all you’ve been doing is writing crap.

Let’s skip ahead to fall 2017. I’m still slopping through the mire of my current work-in-progress, and in walks the man of my dreams. I started dating a guy… and you know how that goes. I now had a distraction from my book and my blog! Wahoo! I really fell head over heels for this guy and I spent the whole of 2018 falling in love.

My writing dropped dramatically. Which I don’t see as all bad. The process of falling in love seemed to fill that creative void that writing usually did. I did still manage to write some though, and in September of 2018, I finally published The Bear Gap Rebels.

Besides one super, short post (which I wrote AFTER the fact), I did nothing to announce the release. I almost felt embarrassed about it. It had taken me soooo long and at that point, I’d been off the radar for a year and half and I didn’t think anyone was still listening anyway.

During this same time, I had all the covers of my books updated to these gorgeous images, but again, I did nothing to announce it. Although I was writing a lot less, I was still writing and doing some work on my books. I just wanted to do it in a vacuum. I didn’t feel worthy enough to talk about it.

A year after I had met dream man, we got engaged. Then began the wedding planning… For seven months, I hustled, working full time, looking for a new place to live, and planning a wedding. It was a huge undertaking and big life change for me. For those seven months, I don’t think I wrote a single word, except for the addresses on our wedding invitations.

When the big day came, all my focus was on the adjustments of married life. I was living in a new place, with a new person, and a lot of my life had changed really quickly. Those first few months of marriage were tough.

If you’re keeping track, I’ve now listed two excuses for why I stopped blogging: feeling inadequate with my current book, and being distracted by love, but there is a third reason. Just a few weeks after I was married, my Grammie passed away.

She was truly one of my biggest fans when it came to writing. In fact, I had given her an advanced copy of The Bear Gap Rebels to read just about a year before she died. I even dedicated that book to her.

I didn’t realize it at first, but when she died, it gave me a sense of pointlessness when it came to writing. I knew she read everything I wrote, so the idea of writing a Facebook or a blog post just felt meaningless. She was no longer there to comment or tell me she liked it. A lot of what I had been writing was for her, even though I didn’t know it at the time.

November 2019 rolled around. Raise your hand if you know what happens in November? If you’ve been here before then you know, my writing career started with Nanowrimo. It’s all too fitting that Nano would be the thing to rescue me from a year of not writing.

It felt weird, and awkward, and I didn’t know where to start, but I knew I had to get back in the saddle. I committed to write 50,000 words for the month of November. For the first time in a long time, I sat down and wrote every. single. day.

I ended up rough drafting the first half of my next book and the 4^th book in the Camilla Crim series! If I’m being honest, the rough draft was pretty terrible, but that’s what the rough draft is for.

After that, getting back into a writing habit became easier. All spring I’ve been working on revisions for The Hated Warwick. Getting back into blog writing has been less easy, but here I am.

So, there it is. I’ve laid it all out on the table and been transparent about my struggles and triumphs for the last three years. I’m back now, and committed to keeping you up to date on me.

Please comment below. I love to hear from you!

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Lots of love,