Kiss Across Time did rather well when it was first released, but not nearly as well as I’d hoped. I felt the story was different. I wasn’t sure how or why, only that I was drawn to the characters and situations I had set up.
However, writing another book in the series was out of the question. I had become disillusioned with Ellora’s Cave for a number of reasons besides the dwindling monthly cheques. I didn’t want to sell them anything else.
Just one small problem. Well, several of them, actually.
After the release of Kiss Across Time, and the extremely poor sales, yet fantastic feedback from readers, which I could not for the life of me correlate, I was still committed to Ellora’s Cave for three other books. Contracts had been signed, and the books written. They had slots in the Ellora’s Cave release schedule for the next four months.
And Brody and Veris would not sit still in my head. I laid awake at night, dreaming up possible scenarios—something I still do even today—but these were obsessive nights of trying to tell myself to let the stories go…while Veris and Brody ignored me, in their usual fashion.
I told myself to go ahead and write the damned sequel. Get it out of my system, onto the page, and then lock it away.
Permission given, I plotted and wrote Kiss Across Swords in a sweat-inducing two week haze, the fortnight interrupted only by unavoidable events like the day job.
The story was (and still is, I think) one of my best, strongest and most powerful stories. I knew it even as I was finishing it. I think that with both Kiss Across Time and Kiss Across Swords, I had finally mastered the MM portion of MMF relationships and Brody, Veris and Taylor’s romance bloomed completely and in a deeply satisfying way.
That just left me with a finished book I thought was fantastic…and that no other book publisher would touch. Ever.
It was tainted, you see.
The erotic content would ensure that only one or two other publishers might look at it…and even they would not consider it because it was the second book in a series, of which the first book was published by someone else.
Imagine Veris swearing. Something pithy and ripe, as he scowls and crosses his arms.
I knew that if I wanted the book to be read by anyone else, I had no choice but to sell Kiss Acros Swords to Ellora’s Cave. I did not have the gift of foresight, or I would have made a different choice.
Kiss Across Swords was published by Ellora’s Cave at the end of November, 2010.