First and foremost, I have to tip my hat to Bold Strokes Books Senior Editor Sandy Lowe.
Missouri Vaun, VK Powell and I—three unsupervised and over-caffeinated writer friends—were cooped up in Vaun’s living room on a rainy Friday, when the discussion of novella anthologies devolved into an entertaining brainstorm for our own collection of novellas. Our ideas weren’t serious, of course, because the titles sounded like a bar tab, and the plots were a contest of who could make the others laugh the hardest.
The next morning Vaun told us she’d put our ideas into a proposal and sent it to Sandy. You did what? After ingesting caffeine, we agreed it was a good prank. Despite her affectionate nickname of “the angry librarian,” we were confident Sandy would laugh at our little game. We were all surprised, however, when she called our bluff and laid some new cards on the table—serious suggestions, drawn from our silly ideas, for three separate full-length novels. When Vaun read Sandy’s ideas to our little group, we sounded like the SNL skit about Alexa for seniors—“I don’t know about that.” Then we were quiet for a long minute. You know… What if… A third head was nodding. If only we’d known what a difficult challenge we were about to attempt.
Secondly, I have to bow to my writing partners in the three-book Pine Cone romance series. Vaun and VK were the perfect partners for creating a small Southern town full of quirky characters, quaint places, and hot romances.
The most difficult part, overlapping our three stories, was our own design. It was much more arduous than we anticipated, and complicated by conflicting time zones. I was on the East Coast, Vaun on the West Coast, and VK was in Australia most of the summer. Our timeline ended up being a shared spreadsheet. It’s a task that can only be undertaken with friends you love and trust deeply, and who can weather the pressure of deadlines and frustration of chapters that have to be rewritten because “my character totally would not act like that.”
If you enjoy this book, I hope you’ll visit with my characters and their friends in Take My Hand by Missouri Vaun, which was released last month, and Take Your Time by VK Powell, which will be released in August.