I had the plot for this novella featuring Kathleen banging around in my head for years, but it was in late October when I working with my great cover designer, Michelle Huffaker, to come up with a new holiday-themed cover for Pilfered Promises that I had the brain-storm to set the Kathleen’s story in the week after the events of Pilfered Promises.
Because Annie and Nate would be out of town, I decided this would be the perfect time to let Kathleen solve a mystery on her own. However, it also made sense to try to get this story (silly me I thought I could do it as a short story) out in early December as a kind of holiday present to fans of the series. This required not only long stretches of writing (and family and friends who understood why I wasn’t as available as usual for the next month) but also beta readers who would be willing stick to a very short turn-around time for giving me feedback.
So my heartfelt thanks goes out to Jim Brown, Ann Elwood, Micheline Plummer Golden, Robin Harsh, Casey Jones, Abigail Padgett, Rene Siracusa, Linda Strauss for doing such a lovely job in such a short period of time. I also want to thank Michelle Huffaker for coming up with another sweet holiday cover for the novella and my proof-reader Jessica Meigs for eradicating all the little errors that my beta readers failed to find.
And to all the fans of the series, I want to thank you for the way you have embraced the characters and cheered on my independent writing career over the past eight years.
Finally, I can assure you that I would never have gotten this novella written and out to the world without the continued love and support of my husband (and first reader) and the motivation that my daughter Ashley and her children provide for me every day.