Mia Sheridan's Blog

Steamy Romance Novels You Won’t Be Able to Put Down

I’m so honored to have been chosen for a wiki! Check out their list of Steamy Romance Novels You Won’t Be Able to Put Down and see which one of my titles was chosen.

Q&A with Mia about Grayson’s Vow

Hi there! Because I’ve been receiving many messages about Grayson’s Vow from readers, I thought I’d answer some of the most commonly asked questions (plus a few extra) right here! (Grayson’s Vow, A Sign of Love, Libra is now available on all platforms).

 

Q) “Mia, the setting in Grayson’s Vow is so beautiful and was almost another character in your story. Have you ever been to Napa? I want to book a trip there now. Katy M.”

 

A) Thanks, Katy! Yes, actually, I have been to Napa and it’s a special location for me as it was the first trip I ever took with my then-boyfriend/now-husband. We actually stayed at the Bed & Breakfast I mentioned in the book, The Beazley House (highly recommended if you do end up going there!). And yes, I felt the same way—Napa Valley has such a dream-like, romantic quality to it with its misty-morning vineyards, castle-like wineries, fall fields of vibrant yellow mustard seed flowers, mountain backdrops, and hot air balloons floating in the skies above. It’s truly a fairytale location (not to mention the best part of all: the wine!) and I absolutely fell in love with it all over again while writing Grayson’s Vow.

 

Q) “I absolutely adored Kira and she’s my new favorite heroine of yours! Probably my favorite heroine of all time! She was hilarious and slightly crazy but also so compassionate and so full of heart. Do you have a favorite heroine? Dorothea V.”

 

A) Hi, Dorothea! Thank you! I’m so glad you loved Kira. I usually say my favorite characters are the ones I’m currently writing, as I’m spending so much time in “their” heads at the moment. But, Kira absolutely has a very special place in my heart and although Grayson’s character came to me first, I knew I had to create a very special (and different) type of

heroine

for him. With that in mind, Kira came to me immediately and very strongly—someone who was brave, and also so filled with fun and vibrancy that she was a) not afraid to poke at Grayson and b) slightly crazy enough that she kept Grayson completely unbalanced and he forgot to be the cold, detached man he had become. I knew she had to be a girl who kept him half out of his head most of the time (in a myriad of ways) because that was the only way he’d let his guard down enough to allow himself to love someone.

 

Q) “Grayson’s Vow was wonderful! My heart was so full of love and hope at the end – that’s what your books always do for me. This book had a little bit of a lighter feel than some of your others and I didn’t expect to laugh as much as I did. That was awesome and you do it really well! Will you write more books like this? Jamie B.”

 

A) What a great compliment! Thank you, Jamie! I absolutely set out to write Grayson’s Vow with a lighter, less tragic feel than some of my others. And after writing five heavy books in a row, I needed Grayson and Kira, and especially Kira’s crazy antics! And although

hopefully

the story causes the reader’s heart to race in spots, and many emotions are felt, this is not a book where you should expect an “ugly cry.” It’s a book where, hopefully, you are immersed in a journey, flip the pages quickly to find out what will happen next, feel for the characters, laugh, tear up here and there, and close the book with a smile on your face, feeling full and complete. There have been very difficult, emotional times in my life where I needed an escape, but I needed to know that what I was escaping into wasn’t going to destroy my emotions any further than they already were with something I would dwell on or couldn’t recover from fictionally (am I the only one this happens to?).  Creating something to fit that bill was my intent with Grayson’s Vow.

 

Q) “Hi Mia, I loved Grayson’s Vow! It’s my top read of 2015 so far! I love that it’s almost an upside down fairy tale. Did you do that on purpose or did it just happen naturally? Thanks! Lisa M.”

 

A) Thanks, Lisa! I love how you put that – an “upside-down fairy tale!” That’s a great description and although I didn’t work that into the plotting of the story initially, once Kira first described Grayson as a dragon (instead of the prince she had first thought him to be based on his looks), the theme kept rolling from there, and I had some fun with it. But yes, this is not a story of the prince and the princess, but rather a sassy little witch and a judgmental dragon. And in this story, the heroine is the one who saves the day.

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A Love Letter To My Husband

Dear Kevin,

Almost fourteen years ago, I walked down a candlelit aisle toward you, carrying a bouquet of roses in my trembling hands and you gazed at me as if I was all you’d ever dreamed. We whispered forever, vowing for better or for worse, having no earthly idea of what that really meant. We have some idea now, don’t we love? Then, we only knew thumping hearts, and dreams spoken between breathless sighs in a world where happy endings always came true.

I had no way to know that sometimes marriage means dancing under the moonlight on a private balcony on a honeymoon in Paris. And sometimes, sometimes marriage means waking to your husband swaying in the corner, your lifeless baby in his arms, as he quietly sings her the ABCs because it’s the only “lullaby” he knows. Sometimes marriage means both of your hearts silently breaking in a dim hospital room.

And you, my love, you had no way to know that sometimes marriage means strawberry waffles and laughter on a Sunday morning. And sometimes marriage means a wife who slams doors and collapses in tears, and screams at you out of pain and grief and then hopes you’ll find it in your heart to comfort her anyway.

You’ve always found it in your heart.

We had no way of knowing, did we?

We had no way of knowing about the fights and the silence, the turning away and the bitterness. We had no way of knowing the fathomless depths to which love can go, the private jokes that are only ours, the familiar hand that grasps in the darkness, and the way our mattress dips where we meet in the middle.

We’ve met in the middle again and again, haven’t we?

And that’s really what marriage has to become. For true love isn’t about candlelight and roses. God, I wish it was. True love is always at least a little bit about sacrifice, about forgiveness, about turning back when you’ve turned away. We had no way of knowing.

We had no way of knowing about the five babies who would come as I gripped the hospital sheets and screamed through the pain, and your eyes widened and you fed me ice chips like you were the CEO of Ice Chip Feeding—the five babies who would once again change everything, each in their own unique way.

Sometimes I think back to the things I first noticed about you. The way you boyishly glanced at me and looked away, and glanced back at me again. The way your full lips parted over those perfectly straight teeth. The way your dark hair fell over your forehead and the way you brushed it away. The way you looked at me as if I was the only girl on earth.

You say you saw me first, and yet, I swear it was me. I saw you walking toward my friend and I and noticed in a glance how handsome you were. I braced myself because I thought my friend was prettier than me, better hair, better everything and I just knew you’d approach her first. Why wouldn’t you? But when you walked up to us, you looked straight at me and never looked away.

Just as you’ve never looked away since.

I told you once about the boy I dated before you, the one who told me I wasn’t the prettiest girl in the room. “I think he was joking . . . I guess . . .” I’d let the words fade away as I offered an uncomfortable laugh and shrugged my shoulders. But you  must have seen the hurt on my face because you lifted my chin and looked right into my eyes and said, “He was wrong.” I wanted to look away, but I didn’t because I saw your whole heart right in your expression and I swear to you, it healed me more than a thousand therapy sessions ever could.

Sometimes marriage is about not letting the other person look away

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The Answer

I volunteered at Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep’s booth a couple months ago during a tradeshow where they were recruiting photographers to volunteer for their service. If you’ve never heard of Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, I encourage you to find out more about them. They are a wonderful organization who sends a photographer, free of charge, to provide remembrance photography for families who are experiencing the loss of a baby.

If you are a photographer who feels called to donate a few hours of your time a month for such a family, please look into it. It is life changing, it is painfully beautiful, and I promise you, those families will never, ever forget the gift you leave them with.

At one point during the time I was volunteering, a man came up and we chatted a little bit. He had done some remembrance photography years earlier and was considering doing it again. He told a story of one of the first families he took photographs for and it’s been floating around in my mind ever since.

He worked at a small local hospital where he had originally been in charge of taking newborn photos—you know, the simple ones that are offered in packages that you can purchase if you choose. At one point, a stillborn had been delivered and one of the nurses called and asked if he would consider volunteering to come in and take photos of that family. He did, and over the next year, there were one or two more. It was a tiny hospital—they had a small number of births, and very rarely a situation that required remembrance photography.

One cold, October morning he was called for such a session and when he showed up, there was a sixteen-year-old girl sitting in the hospital bed with the lifeless body of her son in her arms, swaddled in a hospital-issue blanket. The seventeen-year-old father was there, too, and when the photographer arrived, the father spoke his disagreement about having photographs taken at all, but the mother quietly insisted. Unable to handle watching the body of his son be unwrapped and handled by a stranger, the young father slammed out of the room.

My heart lingers on that part of the story, picturing the boy sitting alone in the waiting room, needing a father of his own.

But no one else was there for this couple. Not one single person.

As the photographer began taking photographs of the baby, handling him gently and with love, the mother, tears rolling down her cheeks, asked, “Why do you do this?”

How are you able, he heard. How can you stand it?

It took him by surprise, that question, and he wasn’t sure how to answer. He paused and said the first thing that came to his mind. “Because someone should and I can.”

Because someone should and I can.

Those words have been bouncing around in my head all these months later, catching me unaware sometimes, sticking, whereas other things I try to remember fall out of my brain despite my best efforts.

Because someone should and I can.

So simple and yet so profound. What is the thing that should be done that I can do? How can I make this world better simply by giving my gifts? My time? The love in my heart? I find myself asking these questions each time his answer drifts through my mind.

I was volunteering that day because several years ago, the hospital where I delivered my fifth baby called NILMDTS for me and a wonderful woman named Dianne showed up and lovingly took photographs of our stillborn baby girl, photos that I will forever be grateful for, photographs that are proof that Darcy Rose existed, that she had light brown hair, and long fingers, and a nose just like her sister.

Dianne was also volunteering at the booth that day a few months ago, and seeing her again and embracing her was one of the most emotional moments I’ve ever experienced. The last time I’d seen her, I was devastated, shell-shocked, cradling the lifeless body of my daughter, drowning in despair so intense, I didn’t think I could survive it. But hugging Dianne again almost four years later, I smiled through my tears, healed and filled with the knowledge I hadn’t imagined could be true: there is life after such a loss. There is, there is. I promise. There is.

Dianne told me what I hadn’t known then: that we were the first family she was sent to. She had sat in the waiting room, shaking, so nervous that she wouldn’t do it right, as Darcy was born down the hallway, her still body separated from mine, her spirit somewhere far above. As we wept, our broken hearts asking God why, Dianne was praying that she might lessen some of our pain, that she would honor our baby in such a way that would allow us to take a part of her home with us. Stories like Dianne’s come to me like the dawn comes to the night, casting light where once there was only darkness, allowing me to see that despite the vestiges of pain that still linger when I go back there in my mind, I now also see all the beauty, all the love that shone down on that previously dark, shadowed day. I see it clearly and it continues to heal me.

All the questions I asked God, the why, why, why, and His answer was all those people. The ones who cried for us, the ones who sat shaking in the waiting room praying their own prayer to make it better, the ones who brought meals, the ones who sent cards with ink smeared by tears, the ones who showed up, and then didn’t stop showing up, to listen, to cry, to vent to and eventually . . . to smile with.

And somehow it seems our whole purpose in this world might be to figure out the thing we can do that should be done and then to do it with our whole heart. It’s been done for me, and I promise, it has saved my life.

Because someone should and I can.

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The Violence of Comparison

Cade brought home a note from his camp teacher last week, telling us what a kind, funny boy he is and how he is such a good friend to everyone. Now, before anyone starts getting jealous about my perfect children, let me reassure you that I’ve received plenty of the “other” type of note, too. But that’s for a different post.

I wrapped my arms around him and praised him highly, telling him that he should be proud of what a good little person he is.

Lila, standing nearby, put her hands on her hips, her eyes flaring with indignation, and shouted angrily, “You don’t love ME? You don’t think I’m a good person?” And then she burst into tears.

Oh, Lila, I thought, sighing. Why would you think that I don’t love you, just because I love your brother? Because he received praise and you didn’t? Don’t you know that the sun rises and sets over each of my children? That my heart swells with love when I even think about you? You’re my precious Lila! Your gifts and your accolades are different, just as Jack and Tyler’s are, too, but my pride in you is the same.

It’s ridiculous. I would never . . .

Well, I mean, I wouldn’t . . .

But Mia, don’t you do that, too?

Why does she get an easier life than I do? Why is she prettier than me? Has better hair? Smarter . . . funnier, thinner? Why are their blessings greater than mine? Why does she struggle less than I do? Sell more books, have more reviews, get more attention?

Our stories are different, our struggles aren’t the same but don’t we ALL look at those pretty Pinterest photos or Facebook posts and wish our life really looked like that all the time? Or even once in a blue freaking moon?

(And so, okay, just in the interest of being honest here, that pretty Christmas card I sent out last year? I bribed my kids with Skittles to sit still and smile, screamed at them when we got home because they were fighting and consoled myself with a bottle of wine. Alone. True story.) So yeah, I have a beautiful family. In other news, I’m slightly hysterical and sometimes wake up with a hangover.

My point is, we only see others from the outside—we see ourselves from the inside. The full picture is vastly different, my friends. Comparison isn’t even real. It’s most often based on an illusion. It’s false and unfair and it hurts.

“Comparison is an act of violence against yourself.” – Iyanla Vanzant

And God, doesn’t it feel that way? Like you’re hacking at yourself from the inside? Like you’re scratching those tender places bloody and raw and convincing yourself you don’t have more because you’re undeserving somehow? You’re not good enough, not smart enough, not talented enough? Like someone left you behind? Hack, hack, hack. Like a desperate, slow, violent death of the soul.

And yeah, you’re the one wielding the knife. Uh huh, I’ve been there, too. I know the feel of the blade as it pierces, know the sting of the words that accompany the pain: there is not enough for me.

It’s a lie.

There is enough for you, for me, for us all. Your journey is enough. Your story is enough. You, just as you are, you are enough.

And I have to remind myself, too, more constantly than I’d like to admit. I will never be Angelina Jolie and live in a mansion in Hollywood with Brad Pitt. I’ve suffered painful losses, I’ve had exciting things happen, I’ve been poor (like, counting pennies in the console of my car to pay for a Taco Bell burrito poor), I’ve been rich by some standards (although in comparison . . .

In The Beginning

Almost three years ago, life as I knew it ended.

I was in the final weeks of my fifth pregnancy, anticipating the arrival of our baby girl, Darcy Rose. I was filling her closet with tiny pink outfits and putting the finishing touches on her nursery, a lovely, peaceful space I’d decorated in shades of cream, white and tan. I’d sit in the glider in the evenings after I’d put my other four children to bed, and I’d feel Darcy’s gentle movements from within, filled with anticipation about holding her in my arms and gazing into her precious, newborn face.

And suddenly . . . so suddenly it seemed, there was only a lack of movement, a still, silent ultrasound, a long, dark night filled with my own wails of agony as I fought and strained to bring my daughter’s lifeless body into the world. As the night turned to dawn, I was rolled into surgery and it was discovered that my uterus had just ruptured. It couldn’t be saved. I barely survived, losing not only my uterus but more than half my body’s blood. As I lay sleeping, my daughter was born still. When I woke, I held my little girl’s small, perfectly formed body in my arms for two days, memorizing every part of her, whispering how sorry I was again and again, begging her forgiveness for that which I blamed myself. Surely, I had done something terrible, surely I was a very bad person to have been punished in such a way. I was wheeled out of the hospital in a haze of grief of an intensity I hadn’t known existed, left only with a small pink urn. I had been expecting that in the early days of April, I’d be sitting and holding a newborn, baby girl. Instead, I sat in the armchair in my living room, a pile of grief books on my lap, her milk having dried up in my breasts, no evidence of her existence other than the six-inch scar still healing on my lower abdomen, a metaphor for the line drawn in my mind that would forever delineate before and after.

I was reeling, left gasping with agonizing emotional pain. This is not how my life was supposed to be, I kept thinking. This can’t be real. I might very well live another fifty years, I thought. How will I do that? It seemed unfathomable. It seemed as if someone had just told me I’d be in labor for a decade. I couldn’t survive it. It wasn’t possible.

“You’re very brave,” my grief counselor said gently one June day.

“Why?” I asked, meeting her eyes. “Because I get up every day and live my life? What other choice do I have?”

She smiled. “We always have choices,” she said. “There are a hundred ways a person can give up.”

“Hmm,” I said, latching on to the idea that perhaps there were a few ways out I hadn’t yet considered. Finally, I sighed, dismissing the idea. I got out of bed again the next morning. I didn’t feel brave. I just felt broken.

I continued reading grief books. “Why,” I cried to my husband, “can’t I find a book offering some hope?” I needed so badly to find a book written by someone who had been in the same place I was, telling me there was life after this. I needed to hear that though I was in pain, I wouldn’t always be suffering. I needed not only to hear that others could identify with my pain, but that they could tell me with authority that I would care about life again, that there was reason for hope.

I brought the topic up to my friends, too. “Why don’t you write that book?” they asked. But I wasn’t there at that time. I could hardly offer hope to anyone while I was still very much bereft of hope. I could hardly offer that which I had yet to find.

I wanted so desperately to make Darcy’s story something other than just raw pain. I wanted something beautiful to come from her short life, to make the suffering meaningful. But I didn’t know how. I sat down at my computer to write about her, creating a blog for friends and family who wanted to know how we were doing. “You should write a book,” I heard again and again from those who had read my posts. “The way you describe your emotions makes me feel it, too.”

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I could never share her with those I don’t know.” It felt vastly unsafe. It filled me with dread.

I started thinking, though: I’d always loved romances and I was reading a lot of them as an escape at that point. What if I wrote a fantasy, something light, but used the story as an outlet for some of my own feelings? Would it help? “Do it,” Kevin said when I brought up the idea. “I’ll watch the kids while you write.” It was simply an act of love on his part. He wanted me to heal and he’d do anything to help me in that effort.

And so I did. I wrote about two foster kids who had been separated by time and circumstance. I didn’t know how to write fiction—not really. I could write a three-page list of all the things I did wrong with Leo. Perhaps four pages. I didn’t know much. But what I did know was longing. A soul-deep yearning. What I did know was what it felt like to get up and live life despite my own miserable circumstances. And I channeled those feelings into Evie’s character. It helped. I figured out how to publish it to Amazon, thinking maybe my husband and a few friends might read it eventually. I sent it to a few book blogs. I didn’t even know what book blogs were until that point. I didn’t think too much about it—it was somewhere in the vast nowhere of cyberspace, lost in pages of unread emails. I went about my business.

A week later, I was outside pulling weeds in our backyard when I casually mentioned to my husband that I had put my book up on Amazon. “You did?” he asked. “Like if I look it up, it will be there?”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling, thinking he would think I was pretty tech savvy for figuring it all out.

A few minutes later, Kevin popped his head back out the back door, holding my cell phone. “Um, honey?” he said, “you have two-hundred-something reviews and one of them says that you made USA Today.” Ice water hit my veins. I dropped my gardening gloves and hurried inside, snatching the phone with the Amazon web page pulled up. When I saw that he wasn’t teasing me, I burst into tears.

“Why are you crying?” Kevin asked. “This is incredible!”

“I . . . I just . . . I didn’t think anyone would read it.”

“Well, why did you put it up then?” He laughed.

“I don’t know. I just didn’t know what else to do with it. I thought . . .” What had I thought? I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that in that moment, it felt like I had just found out that thousands of people had read my diary and were posting their thoughts online. I ran to my bedroom and sobbed into my pillow, pulling the blankets up over my head.

Kevin followed me and lay down next to me, pulling the covers back and wiping the tears from my cheeks. “Can I read you a part of a review?” he asked. I sniffled but nodded. “I am absolutely stunned by the author’s ability to create such a beautiful story out of such tragedy,” he read. “In two words this story can be described as Emotionally Beautiful.” He turned the phone toward me so that I could see and wiped another tear from my cheek.

I took the phone and looked at the reviews. “There’s another one here that says she laughed through the whole book—and not in a good way.” My stomach clenched with humiliation.

“What?” Kevin asked, taking the phone back and looking at it. “I’ll hunt her down, and then I’ll kill her.”

I laughed, pressing my face into his chest, inhaling the smell of love and comfort. “Okay,” I said. He laughed back, pulling me closer.

I raised my face to his. “Our daughter is in that story,” I said. “A part of her at least. No one knows that.”

“I do,” he said. “I know. The people who love you know.”

Since that day, I’ve written six more books, hitting the New York Times bestseller list with my fourth book, Archer’s Voice. Each story is different. But what they all share in common is the message that there is always hope—even when life doesn’t seem like it can get much more bleak, even when you’re broken and reeling, grief-stricken and beaten down. Whether you’re a foster kid or a cult member, whether you’re forgotten and disabled, whether you’ve done shameful things in your past, made mistakes you don’t ever believe you can atone for, whether you’re lonely and poverty-stricken, there is life after this. That is my message to the world. That is the thing that I can speak of with authority. Not an authority that comes from reading about something in a textbook, or through observation, but an authority of the soul. An authority that only comes from having survived something that felt unsurvivable. Is there a word for that? If there is, I don’t know it. If there isn’t, there should be.

People sometimes ask me if I have any advice for authors just starting out, those who have a passion to write. I guess my advice on writing is the same advice I would give on living: Figure out what you have an authority of the soul on and weave that into your life, your story. Give the world the thing that only you can give. Share it. It isn’t safe—it’s decidedly unsafe. It’s terrifying. It’s revealing. But it’s the thing that people will connect to—it’s the thing we all crave: to know that we’re not alone, that we’re not the only one. If you’re going to do it—do it. Wear your heart on your sleeve. Dig in your heels, bare your heart, open your arms wide and stake your claim. Do the one thing no one can ever teach another person how to do. You.

And to Darcy Rose, thank you sweet girl. If I am brave—if I was ever brave—and if there’s anything beautiful about my story, it’s because you made it so.

The post In The Beginning appeared first on Mia Sheridan.

The Violence of Comparison

Cade brought home a note from his camp teacher last week, telling us what a kind, funny boy he is and how he is such a good friend to everyone. Now, before anyone starts getting jealous about my perfect children, let me reassure you that I’ve received plenty of the “other” type of note, too. But that’s for a different post.

I wrapped my arms around him and praised him highly, telling him that he should be proud of what a good little person he is.

Lila, standing nearby, put her hands on her hips, her eyes flaring with indignation, and shouted angrily, “You don’t love ME? You don’t think I’m a good person?” And then she burst into tears.

Oh, Lila, I thought, sighing. Why would you think that I don’t love you, just because I love your brother? Because he received praise and you didn’t? Don’t you know that the sun rises and sets over each of my children? That my heart swells with love when I even think about you? You’re my precious Lila! Your gifts and your accolades are different, just as Jack and Tyler’s are, too, but my pride in you is the same.

It’s ridiculous. I would never . . .

Well, I mean, I wouldn’t . . .

But Mia, don’t you do that, too?

Why does she get an easier life than I do? Why is she prettier than me? Has better hair? Smarter . . . funnier, thinner? Why are their blessings greater than mine? Why does she struggle less than I do? Sell more books, have more reviews, get more attention?

Our stories are different, our struggles aren’t the same but don’t we ALL look at those pretty Pinterest photos or Facebook posts and wish our life really looked like that all the time? Or even once in a blue freaking moon?

(And so, okay, just in the interest of being honest here, that pretty Christmas card I sent out last year? I bribed my kids with Skittles to sit still and smile, screamed at them when we got home because they were fighting and consoled myself with a bottle of wine. Alone. True story.) So yeah, I have a beautiful family. In other news, I’m slightly hysterical and sometimes wake up with a hangover.

My point is, we only see others from the outside—we see ourselves from the inside. The full picture is vastly different, my friends. Comparison isn’t even real. It’s most often based on an illusion. It’s false and unfair and it hurts.

“Comparison is an act of violence against yourself.” – Iyanla Vanzant

And God, doesn’t it feel that way? Like you’re hacking at yourself from the inside? Like you’re scratching those tender places bloody and raw and convincing yourself you don’t have more because you’re undeserving somehow? You’re not good enough, not smart enough, not talented enough? Like someone left you behind? Hack, hack, hack. Like a desperate, slow, violent death of the soul.

And yeah, you’re the one wielding the knife. Uh huh, I’ve been there, too. I know the feel of the blade as it pierces, know the sting of the words that accompany the pain: there is not enough for me.

It’s a lie.

There is enough for you, for me, for us all. Your journey is enough. Your story is enough. You, just as you are, you are enough.

And I have to remind myself, too, more constantly than I’d like to admit. I will never be Angelina Jolie and live in a mansion in Hollywood with Brad Pitt. I’ve suffered painful losses, I’ve had exciting things happen, I’ve been poor (like, counting pennies in the console of my car to pay for a Taco Bell burrito poor), I’ve been rich by some standards (although in comparison . . .

The Answer

I volunteered at Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep’s booth a couple months ago during a tradeshow where they were recruiting photographers to volunteer for their service. If you’ve never heard of Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, I encourage you to find out more about them. They are a wonderful organization who sends a photographer, free of charge, to provide remembrance photography for families who are experiencing the loss of a baby.

If you are a photographer who feels called to donate a few hours of your time a month for such a family, please look into it. It is life changing, it is painfully beautiful, and I promise you, those families will never, ever forget the gift you leave them with.

At one point during the time I was volunteering, a man came up and we chatted a little bit. He had done some remembrance photography years earlier and was considering doing it again. He told a story of one of the first families he took photographs for and it’s been floating around in my mind ever since.

He worked at a small local hospital where he had originally been in charge of taking newborn photos—you know, the simple ones that are offered in packages that you can purchase if you choose. At one point, a stillborn had been delivered and one of the nurses called and asked if he would consider volunteering to come in and take photos for that family. He did, and over the next year, there were one or two more. It was a tiny hospital—they had a small number of births, and very rarely a situation that required remembrance photography.

One cold, October morning he was called for such a session and when he showed up, there was a sixteen-year-old girl sitting in the hospital bed with the lifeless body of her son in her arms, swaddled in a hospital-issue blanket. The seventeen-year-old father was there, too, and when the photographer arrived, the father spoke his disagreement about having photographs taken at all, but the mother quietly insisted. Unable to handle watching the body of his son be unwrapped and handled by a stranger, the young father slammed out of the room.

My heart lingers on that part of the story, picturing the boy sitting alone in the waiting room, needing a father of his own.

But no one else was there for this couple. Not one single person.

As the photographer began taking photographs of the baby, handling him gently and with love, the mother, tears rolling down her cheeks, asked, “Why do you do this?”

How are you able, he heard. How can you stand it?

It took him by surprise, that question, and he wasn’t sure how to answer. He paused, and said the first thing that came to his mind. “Because someone should and I can.”

Because someone should and I can.

Those words have been bouncing around in my head all these months later, catching me unaware sometimes, sticking, whereas other things I try to remember fall out of my brain despite my best efforts.

Because someone should and I can.

So simple and yet so profound. What is the thing that should be done that I can do? How can I make this world better simply by giving my gifts? My time? The love in my heart? I find myself asking these questions each time his answer drifts through my mind.

I was volunteering that day because several years ago, the hospital where I delivered my fifth baby called NILMDTS for me and a wonderful woman named Dianne showed up and lovingly took photographs of our stillborn baby girl, photos that I will forever be grateful for, photographs that are proof that Darcy Rose existed, that she had light brown hair, and long fingers, and a nose just like her sister.

Dianne was also volunteering at the booth that day a few months ago, and seeing her again and embracing her was one of the most emotional moments I’ve ever experienced. The last time I’d seen her, I was devastated, shell-shocked, cradling the lifeless body of my daughter, drowning in despair so intense, I didn’t think I could survive it. But hugging Dianne again almost four years later, I smiled through my tears, healed and filled with the knowledge I hadn’t imagined could be true: there is life after such a loss. There is, there is. I promise. There is.

Dianne told me what I hadn’t known then: that we were the first family she was sent to. She had sat in the waiting room, shaking, so nervous that she wouldn’t do it right, as Darcy was born down the hallway, her still body separated from mine, her spirit somewhere far above. As we wept, our broken hearts asking God why, Dianne was praying that she might lessen some of our pain, that she would honor our baby in such a way that would allow us to take a part of her home with us. Stories like Dianne’s come to me like the dawn comes to the night, casting light where once there was only darkness, allowing me to see that despite the vestiges of pain that still linger when I go back there in my mind, I now also see all the beauty, all the love that shone down on that previously dark, shadowed day. I see it clearly and it continues to heal me.

All the questions I asked God, the why, why, why, and His answer was all those people. The ones who cried for us, the ones who sat shaking in the waiting room praying their own prayer to make it better, the ones who brought meals, the ones who sent cards with ink smeared by tears, the ones who showed up, and then didn’t stop showing up, to listen, to cry, to vent to and eventually . . . to smile with.

And somehow it seems our whole purpose in this world might be to figure out the thing we can do that should be done and then to do it with our whole heart. It’s been done for me, and I promise, it has saved my life.

Because someone should and I can.

Q&A With Mia About Grayson’s Vow (Now Available)

Hi there! Because I’ve been receiving many messages about Grayson’s Vow from readers, I thought I’d answer some of the most commonly asked questions (plus a few extra) right here! (Grayson’s Vow, A Sign of Love, Libra is now available on all platforms).

Q) “Mia, the setting in Grayson’s Vow is so beautiful and was almost another character in your story. Have you ever been to Napa? I want to book a trip there now. Katy M.”

A) Thanks, Katy! Yes, actually, I have been to Napa and it’s a special location for me as it was the first trip I ever took with my then-boyfriend/now-husband. We actually stayed at the Bed & Breakfast I mentioned in the book, The Beazley House (highly recommended if you do end up going there!). And yes, I felt the same way—Napa Valley has such a dream-like, romantic quality to it with its misty-morning vineyards, castle-like wineries, fall fields of vibrant yellow mustard seed flowers, mountain backdrops, and hot air balloons floating in the skies above. It’s truly a fairytale location (not to mention the best part of all: the wine!) and I absolutely fell in love with it all over again while writing Grayson’s Vow.

Q) “I absolutely adored Kira and she’s my new favorite heroine of yours! Probably my favorite heroine of all time! She was hilarious and slightly crazy but also so compassionate and so full of heart. Do you have a favorite heroine? Dorothea V.”

A) Hi, Dorothea! Thank you! I’m so glad you loved Kira. I usually say my favorite characters are the ones I’m currently writing, as I’m spending so much time in “their” heads at the moment. But, Kira absolutely has a very special place in my heart and although Grayson’s character came to me first, I knew I had to create a very special (and different) type of heroine for him. With that in mind, Kira came to me immediately and very strongly—someone who was brave, and also so filled with fun and vibrancy that she was a) not afraid to poke at Grayson and b) slightly crazy enough that she kept Grayson completely unbalanced and he forgot to be the cold, detached man he had become. I knew she had to be a girl who kept him half out of his head most of the time (in a myriad of ways) because that was the only way he’d let his guard down enough to allow himself to love someone.

Q) “Grayson’s Vow was wonderful! My heart was so full of love and hope at the end – that’s what your books always do for me. This book had a little bit of a lighter feel than some of your others and I didn’t expect to laugh as much as I did. That was awesome and you do it really well! Will you write more books like this? Jamie B.”

A) What a great compliment! Thank you, Jamie! I absolutely set out to write Grayson’s Vow with a lighter, less tragic feel than some of my others. And after writing five heavy books in a row, I needed Grayson and Kira, and especially Kira’s crazy antics! And although hopefully the story causes the reader’s heart to race in spots, and many emotions are felt, this is not a book where you should expect an “ugly cry.” It’s a book where, hopefully, you are immersed in a journey, flip the pages quickly to find out what will happen next, feel for the characters, laugh, tear up here and there, and close the book with a smile on your face, feeling full and complete. There have been very difficult, emotional times in my life where I needed an escape, but I needed to know that what I was escaping into wasn’t going to destroy my emotions any further than they already were with something I would dwell on or couldn’t recover from fictionally (am I the only one this happens to?). Creating something to fit that bill was my intent with Grayson’s Vow.

Q) “Hi Mia, I loved Grayson’s Vow! It’s my top read of 2015 so far! I love that it’s almost an upside down fairy tale. Did you do that on purpose or did it just happen naturally? Thanks! Lisa M.”

A) Thanks, Lisa! I love how you put that – an “upside-down fairy tale!” That’s a great description and although I didn’t work that into the plotting of the story initially, once Kira first described Grayson as a dragon (instead of the prince she had first thought him to be based on his looks), the theme kept rolling from there, and I had some fun with it. But yes, this is not a story of the prince and the princess, but rather a sassy little witch and a judgmental dragon. And in this story, the heroine is the one who saves the day.

In The Beginning

Almost three years ago, life as I knew it ended.

I was in the final weeks of my fifth pregnancy, anticipating the arrival of our baby girl, Darcy Rose. I was filling her closet with tiny pink outfits and putting the finishing touches on her nursery, a lovely, peaceful space I’d decorated in shades of cream, white and tan. I’d sit in the glider in the evenings after I’d put my other four children to bed, and I’d feel Darcy’s gentle movements from within, filled with anticipation about holding her in my arms and gazing into her precious, newborn face.

And suddenly . . . so suddenly it seemed, there was only a lack of movement, a still, silent ultrasound, a long, dark night filled with my own wails of agony as I fought and strained to bring my daughter’s lifeless body into the world. As the night turned to dawn, I was rolled into surgery and it was discovered that my uterus had just ruptured. It couldn’t be saved. I barely survived, losing not only my uterus, but more than half my body’s blood. As I lay sleeping, my daughter was born still. When I woke, I held my little girl’s small, perfectly formed body in my arms for two days, memorizing every part of her, whispering how sorry I was again and again, begging her forgiveness for that which I blamed myself. Surely, I had done something terrible, surely I was a very bad person to have been punished in such a way. I was wheeled out of the hospital in a haze of grief of an intensity I hadn’t known existed, left only with a small pink urn. I had been expecting that in the early days of April, I’d be sitting and holding a newborn, baby girl. Instead, I sat in the armchair in my living room, a pile of grief books on my lap, her milk having dried up in my breasts, no evidence of her existence other than the six inch scar still healing on my lower abdomen, a metaphor for the line drawn in my mind that would forever delineate before and after.

I was reeling, left gasping with agonizing emotional pain. This is not how my life was supposed to be, I kept thinking. This can’t be real. I might very well live another fifty years, I thought. How will I do that? It seemed unfathomable. It seemed as if someone had just told me I’d be in labor for a decade. I couldn’t survive it. It wasn’t possible.

“You’re very brave,” my grief counselor said gently one June day.

“Why?” I asked, meeting her eyes. “Because I get up every day and live my life? What other choice do I have?”

She smiled. “We always have choices,” she said. “There are a hundred ways a person can give up.”

“Hmm,” I said, latching on to the idea that perhaps there were a few ways out I hadn’t yet considered. Finally, I sighed, dismissing the idea. I got out of bed again the next morning. I didn’t feel brave. I just felt broken.

I continued reading grief books. “Why,” I cried to my husband, “can’t I find a book offering some hope?” I needed so badly to find a book written by someone who had been in the same place I was, telling me there was life after this. I needed to hear that though I was in pain, I wouldn’t always be suffering. I needed not only to hear that others could identify with my pain, but that they could tell me with authority that I would care about life again, that there was reason for hope.

I brought the topic up to my friends, too. “Why don’t you write that book?” they asked. But I wasn’t there at that time. I could hardly offer hope to anyone while I was still very much bereft of hope. I could hardly offer that which I had yet to find.

I wanted so desperately to make Darcy’s story something other than just raw pain. I wanted something beautiful to come from her short life, to make the suffering meaningful. But I didn’t know how. I sat down at my computer to write about her, creating a blog for friends and family who wanted to know how we were doing. “You should write a book,” I heard again and again from those who had read my posts. “The way you describe your emotions makes me feel it, too.”

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I could never share her with those I don’t know.” It felt vastly unsafe. It filled me with dread.

I started thinking, though: I’d always loved romances and I was reading a lot of them as an escape at that point. What if I wrote a fantasy, something light, but used the story as an outlet for some of my own feelings? Would it help? “Do it,” Kevin said when I brought up the idea. “I’ll watch the kids while you write.” It was simply an act of love on his part. He wanted me to heal and he’d do anything to help me in that effort.

And so I did. I wrote about two foster kids who had been separated by time and circumstance. I didn’t know how to write fiction—not really. I could write a three page list of all the things I did wrong with Leo. Perhaps four pages. I didn’t know much. But what I did know was longing. A soul-deep yearning. What I did know was what it felt like to get up and live life despite my own miserable circumstances. And I channeled those feelings into Evie’s character. It helped. I figured out how to publish it to Amazon, thinking maybe my husband and a few friends might read it eventually. I sent it to a few book blogs. I didn’t even know what book blogs were until that point. I didn’t think too much about it—it was somewhere in the vast nowhere of cyberspace, lost in pages of unread emails. I went about my business.

A week later, I was outside pulling weeds in our backyard when I casually mentioned to my husband that I had put my book up on Amazon. “You did?” he asked. “Like if I look it up, it will be there?”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling, thinking he would think I was pretty tech savvy for figuring it all out.

A few minutes later, Kevin popped his head back out the backdoor, holding my cell phone. “Um, honey?” he said, “you have two-hundred-something reviews and one of them says that you made USA Today.” Ice water hit my veins. I dropped my gardening gloves and hurried inside, snatching the phone with the Amazon web page pulled up. When I saw that he wasn’t teasing me, I burst into tears.

“Why are you crying?” Kevin asked. “This is incredible!”

“I . . . I just . . . I didn’t think anyone would read it.”

“Well, why did you put it up then?” He laughed.

“I don’t know. I just didn’t know what else to do with it. I thought . . .” What had I thought? I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that in that moment, it felt like I had just found out that thousands of people had read my diary and were posting their thoughts online. I ran to my bedroom and sobbed into my pillow, pulling the blankets up over my head.

Kevin followed me and lay down next to me, pulling the covers back and wiping the tears from my cheeks. “Can I read you a part of a review?” he asked. I sniffled, but nodded. “I am absolutely stunned by the author’s ability to create such a beautiful story out of such tragedy,” he read. “In two words this story can be described as Emotionally Beautiful.” He turned the phone toward me so that I could see and wiped another tear from my cheek.

I took the phone and looked at the reviews. “There’s another one here that says she laughed through the whole book—and not in a good way.” My stomach clenched with humiliation.

“What?” Kevin asked, taking the phone back and looking at it. “I’ll hunt her down, and then I’ll kill her.”

I laughed, pressing my face into his chest, inhaling the smell of love and comfort. “Okay,” I said. He laughed back, pulling me closer.

I raised my face to his. “Our daughter is in that story,” I said. “A part of her at least. No one knows that.”

“I do,” he said. “I know. The people who love you know.”

Since that day, I’ve written six more books, hitting the New York Times best seller list with my fourth book, Archer’s Voice. Each story is different. But what they all share in common is the message that there is always hope—even when life doesn’t seem like it can get much more bleak, even when you’re broken and reeling, grief-stricken and beaten down. Whether you’re a foster kid or a cult member, whether you’re forgotten and disabled, whether you’ve done shameful things in your past, made mistakes you don’t ever believe you can atone for, whether you’re lonely and poverty-stricken, there is life after this. That is my message to the world. That is the thing that I can speak of with authority. Not an authority that comes from reading about something in a textbook, or through observation, but an authority of the soul. An authority that only comes from having survived something that felt unsurvivable. Is there a word for that? If there is, I don’t know it. If there isn’t, there should be.

People sometimes ask me if I have any advice for authors just starting out, those who have a passion to write. I guess my advice on writing is the same advice I would give on living: Figure out what you have an authority of the soul on and weave that into your life, your story. Give the world the thing that only you can give. Share it. It isn’t safe—it’s decidedly unsafe. It’s terrifying. It’s revealing. But it’s the thing that people will connect to—it’s the thing we all crave: to know that we’re not alone, that we’re not the only one. If you’re going to do it—do it. Wear your heart on your sleeve. Dig in your heels, bare your heart, open your arms wide and stake your claim. Do the one thing no one can ever teach another person how to do. You.

And to Darcy Rose, thank you sweet girl. If I am brave—if I was ever brave—and if there’s anything beautiful about my story, it’s because you made it so.