I thought I should start this note by explaining why it took six extra months to write Outsider. One of those months was spent sitting at my mother’s hospital bedside while she was in a coma, hooked to a ventilator—when I say she nearly died, I’m downplaying all she went through in January. I would not give up on her, and I was at that hospital every day to make sure the doctors and nurses didn’t give up on her either. The next two months I spent assisting my mom with her recovery after open-heart surgery and her weakness from being comatose for so long. Soon after she was mostly on her feet again, they found a spot of cancer in her lung. It was caught early by some blessed health care worker who took a closer look at the X-ray of Mom’s new heart valve. So Mom’s next medical adventure was radiation therapy treatments. We’re still waiting to find out if her cancer is in remission. We’re hopeful. What else can we be? I’m not a skilled enough author to convey the relief I feel that I get to be with my mom—my best friend and greatest champion—a little longer. Because even if she lives to be a hundred and twenty, it won’t be enough time with her.
During those four months of hell and happiness (She survived. That’s the happiness part.), I didn’t write a word. I couldn’t. And when I did start writing again, I spent two additional months trying to remember how to lose myself in a sexy, fantasy rock-and-roll world when reality had become much too vivid for this prefers-to-live-in-her-head author. But I’m back on track now and ecstatic to have finished this book.
Outsider started as one of the wedding stories in Sinners at the Altar. If you’re interested in the original, which would have been called Choose Your Illusion, it’s now chapter thirty-six of Outsider. When I started writing Choose Your Illusion, I found myself explaining a whole lot of backstory to get the reader up to speed on what happed to get our happy threesome to the point of settling for a man-and-wife marriage, and I thought, jeez, there’s so much backstory here, I could write an entire book about it. So I did.
As always, it takes more than an author to publish a book. I’d like to thank my editor, Beth Hill, who never complains about taking all those commas I stick in the wrong places and putting them in the spots they belong. She’s a rock star. I’d also like to thank my beta reader and dear friend, Cyndi McGowen. She’s also a rock star. I’d use other verbiage, but to me “rock star” is the best compliment I can give a person. Special thanks to advice-giving rock stars Evelin Rodriguez and Jerry Maese for their assistance with Spanish and also helping to make Ethan’s wonderful Mexican-American family more realistic. Thanks to my close, personal rock stars Sean Davis and Sommer Darnell at Vulpine Press for all their hard work and putting up with my mood swings. Thanks to Charity Hendry, design rock star, for another fantastic cover. And thanks to my Mom for still being strong when she was at her physical weakest. She’s the greatest rock star I know.
More Sole Regret stories are heading your way soon, as well as Sed and Jessica’s honeymoon story, Lost in Paradise. Next up in the Exodus End series is drummer Steve Aimes’ story. Can he make a Baroquen woman whole again or will he just piss her off?