Rachel Spangler's Blog, page 3

Descended from Voyagers

We are descended from voyagers

Who found their way across the world

They call me

I’ve delivered us to where we are

I have journeyed farther

I am everything I’ve learned and more

Still it calls me

And the call isn’t out there at all, it’s inside me

It’s like the tide; always falling and rising

I will carry you here in my heart you’ll remind me

That come what may

I know the way

 ~ Moana

The above song is on my writing soundtrack for Full English, but more than that, it was my answer to the question Emma Volant asks herself repeatedly through much of my newest release, Full English.

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“What have you done?”  It’s Emma’s common refrain largely because it was mine for the eight months we spent living in the UK and Spain last year.  There were moments when the panic nearly chokes Emma.  Those scenes often coincided with the worst moments of doubt in my own adventures, and while I couldn’t always answer that particular question, I could often hold the panic at bay by whispering back, “I am descended from voyagers.”

My grandpa is kind of big into genealogy.  He has family trees that when spread out will span whole rooms…big ones.  I was raised on stories of our American ancestors.  The first woman to be married at Jamestown, she was one of us. My grandpa took my brother and I there to see her mentioned in the video at the visitor’s center. We were at Valley Forge with Washington and were granted the land now known as Free Union, Virginia for service to him. The family homestead still stands there, and my grandpa took me to visit in middle school. The real-life Johnny Appleseed was also a relative on my grandfather’s mother’s side. That side of the family also fought at Gettysburg and served time as POWs in Andersonville. My grandfather spent summers walking all the grandkids through cemeteries across central Illinois to point out our people.

Then when I was in high school, my grandparents took a trip to Europe and told me that if I earned enough money to pay my way, I could tag along. I did, and it kicked off a love affair with international travel. I stood in the doorway of the church where my grandmother’s grandparents were married near Essen, Germany.  I stared up at The Arc d’ Triumph as Grandma and Grandpa recounted stories my great-grandpa had told  about the liberation of Paris during WWII, you know, ’cause he was there.

Honestly, as a kid I just thought everyone’s family did that sort of thing.  I was much older before I realized it was unusual for people’s families to go off chasing ancestors across the world, and by then it was too late for me to be persuaded that wasn’t normal.

I am everything I’ve learned and more

Still it calls me

So when my main character starts Full English by arriving in a small English village she’s never seen simply because her grandmother used to live there, I was aware of the disorientation she’d feel, but her motivation never felt illogical to me. There’s a scene early in book where she walks the streets of the little seaside town remembering the stories her grandmother told her, and she has a sort of inherited sense of familiarity. It was only after finishing the book that it really set in for me that not all my readers will intuitively relate to that experience, because it was only after I returned to America after similar experiences that I came to understand how much of a disconnect exists between people who have felt those ancestral echoes and people who haven’t.

As a writer, it is frustrating not to have the words you need to explain something amazing.  Until recently I had experienced this only a few times (e.g. explaining what it’s like to feel the first flutters of a baby kicking inside me), but that was nothing compared to the disbelief we encountered when I told people, first in America and then in England, that we’d packed up our family and moved across the ocean because I felt a call I couldn’t explain.

And the call isn’t out there at all, it’s inside me

It’s like the tide; always falling and rising

I wasn’t in quite the same place as my main character, Emma, in that I did know one person in Alnmouth in the village we chose, and we had at least been there for a whole 36 hours several years earlier.  I mean sure, we had never seen the house we’d be living in, and we wouldn’t have a car, but we didn’t know how to drive on the left side anyway. And, yes, Kelly would be traveling often, which meant there would be stretches were we didn’t know anyone, but we’d meet folks eventually. And yes our visas wouldn’t allow Jackson to attend school, so we’d have to figure out how to homeschool, but my wife and I are both highly educated. We’d learn.  And okay, so the village was too small to have a pediatrician, or a doctor even, or a real grocery store, or, you know even an ATM, but what’s that compared to striking out in a wooden ship in search of a northeast passage to China?

Yeah, that probably seems like a really random comparison to most of you, right?  Well one thing I didn’t mention in the earlier list of my lineages, is that in the age of internet genealogy, my grandfather had been able to trace not only our American ancestors, but gain access to resources across the pond. And since no one in my family does anything halfway,  he’d gone right back up to Eleanor of Aquitaine.

To be clear, well more than half of Brits can trace their family back to royalty, so this in no way indicates a superior bloodline.  What it does offer, however, is a really clear picture of who some of the people that shaped my family’s path through the world were, and it turns out by the 1500’s, my people were seafaring explorers.

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The framed photo above sits in my living room.  (I blacked out the identity-stealing portions for this blog). It shows a direct line from me all the way up to Stephen Borough.

We are descended from voyagers

Who found their way across the world

They call me

Stephen was one of the captains on several expeditions in search of a northeast passage to China.  While they found no such route, what they did find was Russia.  This was mind-blowing to many Europeans who knew of Russia only as a small country that barely touched the Black Sea. At this point, England had no real trade relations in that area and no genuine knowledge that Russia was a massive set of territories and duchies and provincial-style holdings that at its largest stretched from modern-day Scandinavia through to the far northeastern edge of Asia. Obviously I’m condensing a lot of this, but Stephen sailed all the way through the North Sea, around the northern-most coasts of Norway/Sweden/Finland, then many many more miles between the coast and the Arctic circle before having to winter in the White Sea.

While there, he interacted with some locals, and it went something vaguely like this:

Stephen: Who are you?

Locals: We are Moscovite Russians

Stephen: You mean that piddly little country on the Black Sea?

Locals: No, we mean this place:

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Stephen: Holy hell! I gotta tell Bloody Mary about this.

Locals: Cool, in the meantime, want to meet Ivan the Terrible?

Stephen: Sounds legit, let’s go!

Anyway, obviously I super condensed that part, too, but Stephen took lots of trip to Russia, negotiated the first trading charter with Russia, set up the first Russian trading company in England, etc.  Later he reformed the way British navigators were trained and the tools they used, like you do, when you’re a well-traveled dude. If you want to learn more about him, you can check out this book that my grandpa gave me a few years ago.

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To be honest, though, it’s value for me lay not in the dates and details of journeys long past, but in the constant reminder that people up my family tree took off with a lot fewer resources and a lot less knowledge to much more remote locations and not only survived, they changed the world. If Stephen Borough could strike out in the unknown and sail the frigid waters of the North Sea in search of new lands, new ideas, new connections, and renewed sense of global identities, then there was no reason I couldn’t do a little bit of the same.

So, I did.

I’ve delivered us to where we are

I have journeyed farther

I packed up my family and moved them across an ocean to a country my ancestors hadn’t inhabited in 400 years, to a village I’d barely visited, and into a house I’d never seen.  And when I walked out my back door, I stared out at the vast, vivid expanse of the great North Sea.

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I’ll blog plenty more about my time abroad and how it connected to various details in Full English.  I’m even planning to blog some more about my search for Stephen Borough, but for now, as you begin to read Full English, as you see Emma arrive in her grandmother’s village for some reason she can’t fully understand, and read about seeing Brogan hoisting sail because of a pull she can’t quite explain, I hope you’ll think of me getting lost in this view and listening to the echoes of my ancestors calling to me in memories made before I was born.

I will carry you here in my heart you’ll remind me

That come what may

I know the way

Another New Release!

Hi Friends,

Welcome to this week’s edition of Rachel’s Really Excited!

Last week I got to celebrate the early release of my newest romance novel, Full English, and that part is still going on, exclusively over at www.bywaterbooks.com where you can pick up the book in print and ebook several weeks ahead of its wide release.

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And now I get to pile on the fun with ANOTHER big announcement.  Are you ready?

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In Development is now available in audiobook!

This is the first audiobook I have self-produced.  A few years ago when I gave the special address at the GCLS Annual Conference, I spoke about how our community needed to do a better job of reaching out to a wider array of audiences, and how until recently our visually impaired readers have either had to miss out on our fiction entirely, or suffer through substandard, computer-generated recordings.  I challenged al of us, myself especially, to make more of our work available in high-quality audio formats. We have come a long way in those few years, and I’m proud to say that more than half of my releases are now out on Audible, with more in production.

So, when it came time to publish In Development under a new model where I retained the audio rights, I knew that I wanted to continue that commitment, but I also knew it wasn’t something I could do at a high level all on my own.  Enter the wonderfully talented Ann Etter.

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Ann and I met through the lesfic community several years ago and have forged a connection over great romances, raising active kids, and never shying away from long road trips. She’s become one of my go-to proofreaders. She also did a couple public/podcast readings of my work for various outlets including The Lesbian Review, and I just fell in love with her voice.  Her accent is incredibly similar to my own mash up of American Midwest and Northeast, but she has a much better range and smoothness I could never master.  Honestly, I listened to several other narrators, but there wasn’t even any real competition.

From there, Ann took on the heavy lifting of reading and editing, while I got to focus on being the rights holder (it involved reading a lot of paper work, of clicking tons of consent boxes and e-signing documents, then listening, approving, and clicking more boxes. Dramatic, I know).   Then the ever-awesome Ann McMan formatted her stellar cover to fit the audio book, and we held our breath.

But today the wait is finally over!  In Development is available through Audible and Amazon!

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For those of you who have been waiting for this one on Audible, get it today!

For those of you who loved the book and want to hear it performed by a real vocal talent, get your copy today!

For those of you who support more accessibility in lesfic, get your copy today!

And for those of you who want to support authors, narrators, editors, cover artists, etc. so we can afford to keep producing lesfic audiobooks, you guessed it, go get your copy today!

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Full English – Limited Release!

Wow, look what arrived at my house!

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That’s my new romance novel, Full English, and it’s here more than a month early.  I swear Bywater keeps getting better and better at this roll-out business. My last two books have both been ready early, so I’ve come to expect a little lead time on the actual publication date, which is why I started introducing Full English to you in my blog last week. However, being more than a month ahead of schedule caught even me by surprise.

So, surprise to you, too!  I will still spend the next few weeks blogging about Full English and the events, places, and people who inspired it, but you no longer have to wait for the back story in order to get the main story.  For the next month, you can get your own copy of Full English in print and in ebook exclusively at http://www.bywaterbooks.com!

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After a publicly humiliating divorce, best-selling author Emma Volant runs away to hide in the seaside English village of Amberwick, where she doesn’t know another living soul. She wants nothing more than to surrender to her broken heart in private. However, when the locals discover their newest resident is world famous, they gather at the local pub and hatch a plan to draw Emma out of her self-imposed isolation, hoping her celebrity status will elevate the village’s reputation to something more than a holiday hotspot.

It doesn’t take long for them to try to rope their favorite bartender, Brogan, into the act. Born and raised in Amberwick, Brogan McKay has built a comfortable life by never overreaching. Part-time jobs and short-term flings have always been good enough for her, but when she meets her beautiful and wounded new neighbor, Brogan realizes Emma has the potential to wreck the carefully controlled expectations she uses to protect her heart. Despite their obvious attraction and growing friendship, both Emma and Brogan are in firm agreement that neither of them is in a position to look for love, but how long can they fight their fears and desires as the events and people around them all conspire to create a full English love story?

Go get your copy now at https://www.bywaterbooks.com/product/full-english-by-rachel-spangler/

What’s In a Title?

Happy New Year!  I hope you all are acclimating well to 2019 so far.  I know we’re just getting started with a new year, but I am eager to start it off right, and in my world, that means we start it off with a new book!

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My next release was born out of the time my family and I spent living in England in 2017/2018.  I am going to do some blogs on those details later, but for now, let’s just say it was a magical, golden time filled with adventure and romance, and I felt inspired every day.  I wrote a classically sweet and romantic novel while nestled in out little village looking out over the North Sea.  I couldn’t wait to share it with you all when I got home; however, I couldn’t even begin the publishing process because I didn’t have a title.

Titles are the worst for me.  Okay, actually they are the second worst after blurbs, but still I am terrible at them.  I haven’t titled even half of my books, instead waiting for friends to do the job for me.  So, I headed off to Indiana to visit friends Sarah and Andy, who have helped with this process in the past.  We did like we always do. We put the kids to bed, got out some wine, and I told them about the story:  Recently divorced American writer moves to her ancestral home in the hopes of hiding out and healing her wounds, but the whole village wants to be friendly and tries to fix her up with the only other lesbian they know, the town’s loveably understated British/Irish bartender.  Then I turned to my friends and said, “Go.”

What followed was an hour of the worst British puns and romantic cliches you can imagine. We ran through themes of hiding, of running away, of travel and homelands. And things only devolved from there.  At one point were were listening to ’80’s pop songs and scanning blurbs of Hallmark movies.  All we got was tipsy and this list of the least horrible ideas, most of which actually were pretty horrible for this book.

Heart’s Hideaway

British Beginnings

Hearts in Hiding

Longing for Home

Getaway Romance

British Begin Again

Worlds Apart

Crossing Borders

Escape to the Country

Borderline

Across the Pond

Run for the Border

Seaside Lover Holiday Village

Waiting for Love in All the Wrong Places

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Weeks, even months later, we were back in in England, still tossing around the ideas and feeling the pressure of a deadline, when we decided to play the same game some of our British friends.  They came up with a similarly tragic list of randomly British things that had virtually nothing to do with the books, usually followed by requests to make them fit through some sort of rewrite.

Castle and Queen (there is a castle in the book)

Garden Party (nope, she does have an important garden, but hosts no parties there)

Tea Time

High Tea (they could get high and drink tea?)

Pub Quiz

London Calling (doesn’t fit and already taken)

The Royal Guard (just no)

Tea and Scones (there actually are assloads of scones in this book, but no)

Borderlands

Bonfires

The list went on and on, and I feared we’d never find a single, catchy, English thing in any way related to the actual book I’d written.  Then came breakfast,  a full English breakfast.

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And no, I have no scenes in the book where my characters flirt over massive plates loaded down with all the good things that pass as acceptable breakfast foods in England.  I did, however, have some very interesting connections forming in my mind.  My main American character’s heritage is English. My other main character is half English, half Irish. They are in effect, both part-English, which is a fun play on the concepts of parts and a whole.  The village and region where they meet and fall in love (That’s not a spoiler. It’s a romance) is also quintessentially English.  The village sets about giving them a full English experience.  And finally, as Emma puts down roots of her own to mingle with those of her family tree, she becomes increasing at home and increasingly English.  The whole story takes a lot of parts, but the sum total works out to be a full English romance.

From there, I wrote a blurb, and Ann McMan designed the deliciously romantic cover. Then Bywater Books started the long process of getting Full English out to you!

 

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After a publicly humiliating divorce, best-selling author Emma Volant runs away to hide in the seaside English village of Amberwick, where she doesn’t know another living soul. She wants nothing more than to surrender to her broken heart in private. However, when the locals discover their newest resident is world famous, they gather at the local pub and hatch a plan to draw Emma out of her self-imposed isolation, hoping her celebrity status will elevate the village’s reputation to something more than a holiday hotspot.

It doesn’t take long for them to try to rope their favorite bartender, Brogan, into the act. Born and raised in Amberwick, Brogan McKay has built a comfortable life by never overreaching. Part-time jobs and short-term flings have always been good enough for her, but when she meets her beautiful and wounded new neighbor, Brogan realizes Emma has the potential to wreck the carefully controlled expectations she uses to protect her heart. Despite their obvious attraction and growing friendship, both Emma and Brogan are in firm agreement that neither of them is in a position to look for love, but how long can they fight their fears and desires as the events and people around them all conspire to create a full English love story?

Happy Holidays

Today we travel.

It is not the end of the year, but it always sort of feels that way.  By the time I am back in my own living room, New Year’s Eve will be upon us.  The time for work is nearly past, and the time for reflection is setting in.

I like this time of year. I like how the hustle and bustle and anticipation of what’s to come manages to blend with the urge to slow down and look back.  It’s a time of great darkness, but also a sense of impending light. Whether your Hanukkah has come and gone, your Solstice is nigh, your Christmas or Kwanzaa is just around the corner, or you’re simply ready for the start of a New Year, I pray you find something worth celebrating.

I also hope you take the time to find your center, look back on where you’ve been, and turn your intentions to what may be.  A big part of that process for our family is making our year-in-review video.  So many times it’s easy to remember the hard times, the losses, the sadness, and the hopes that didn’t come to fruition. I don’t mean to negate those experiences. They were real, and they took their toll on all of us, but when I allow myself to set them aside for just a while and seek out the good, I usually find there was a lot more good than I initially thought.  That was especially true for our family this year.

If you’d like to share in some of those happy memories, here’s the video below.

And no matter where you are, or how you choose to mark the season, Happy Holidays from the Spangler family.

Holiday Book Deal

Hey Folks,

The holidays are upon us, the time of year when everyone is trying to feed you something or sell you something.  I don’t part take in any of the hectic Black Friday bustle, but I’ve been doing all my Small-Business Saturday and Cyber-Monday shopping.  I was also reading up on the Icelandic Jolabokaflod, which translates to the “Christmas Book Flood.”

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Apparently, Iceland is super literary.  They publish a lot of books, and they read a lot of books, a fact that is never more evident at Christmas time, when they gift a lot of books.  I am falling in love with their tradition of giving loved ones books as presents on Christmas Eve so everyone can snuggle up in their warm pajamas and read until Christmas. How amazing does that sound?  I want to make it a thing here, so I’ve already gone ahead and bought Jackson some books for this Christmas Eve.

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What about you?  You want in?

If so, I’ve got a couple ways to help.  Obviously, my awesome publisher, Bywater Books, has a webstore at www.bywaterbooks.com, where you can get not only my books, but some fantastic books by my friends and colleagues in print or ebook.

If you are looking for something personalized to go the extra mile, I also have a few copies of Perfect Pairing, Close To Home, Edge of Glory, In Development, and Love All at my house.  I’d be happy to autograph and mail those to you to give to someone you love, or to yourself, because it’s important to love yourself, too, right?

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The price on those books is $15 each, plus $3 shipping in the continental US.  If you buy more than one book, we can combine shipping, and if you don’t live in the continental US I will still ship them too you, but the price will be dependent on whatever the post office tells me.  Supplies are limited and on a first come first served basis.

If you want to order books directly through me, either email me at Rachel_Spangler@yahoo.com, or comment below with your email, and I’ll contact you.  If I don’t respond within 48 hours, please assume the Internet ate your message, and try again!

Okay, now for a completely shameless and non-book related plug:  I am also hosting a Pampered Chef Party next weekend. You see, not so long ago, while still struggling to make it as an author, I used to sell Pampered Chef products, and I got kind of addicted.  Even though I’ve settled into my dream job as a writer, I still love to cook, and I still love all my Pampered Chef gear, so once a year I host a show for my friends.  If you or anyone you know likes to cook, please check out this link: www.pamperedchef.com/go/rachelspangler122018 

And even if you don’t buy a damn thing from me this holiday season, I hope it’s a good one for you, filled with laughter, light and love.

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Thankful

Happy belated Thanksgiving from the Spangler family!

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I hope that those of you who celebrate all had a wonderful holiday. I don’t believe in the whole pilgrims/Native American/colonist aspect of the day, but I do love any reminder that I have so much to be grateful for.  My wife and son, extended family, great friends,  amazing church,  good home, food on the table, and the best job in the world all top my list. Also this year, after a quick brush with strep throat, I am grateful for urgent care, rapid strep tests, and effective antibiotics.  I don’t take any of these things for granted.

The strep is also my excuse as to why this blog is late.  I hope you all don’t mind, because honestly I’m tremendously grateful for all of you, too.  That whole “best job in the world” thing wouldn’t be possible without those of you who buy and read and review and talk about my books.  You all feed my soul, and you also pay the bills for my literal food as well.  I wish I could have given each one of you a bite of my turkey or pumpkin pie yesterday.  What I can give you instead is 25% off my books, and the books of my awesome colleagues at www.bywaterbooks.com for the rest of the weekend.

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So, Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Black Friday, Happy Small Business Saturday, Happy Cyber Monday, and, oh yeah, I’m happy you’re in my life.  Now go get some books!

Tennis Mom Time

Hey All,

So the election is over and I’m ready to get back to books for a bit.  Things have been going pretty well with Love All, and I’m getting lots of great feedback.  If you’ve already read it, I’d really appreciate an honest review on Amazon.  Those things make a huge difference to authors, especially those of us in small genres like lesfic.

I’m thrilled to the hear so many people are enjoying the romance between Jay and Sadie, but I will admit I have heard from two people now that they were afraid to start the book because they don’t know anything about tennis.  If you fall into this category, fear not. I purposely wrote the book in a way that even people who don’t follow tennis can understand. However, if you still don’t trust me, I got some help from my favorite up-and-coming tennis star to give you a quick primer.

Below you’ll find a video featuring me and my son, Jackson, in which he shows you exactly what I mean by every tennis term I use in the book.  Seriously, this ten-minute video tells you everything you need to know in order to fully enjoy Love All with out getting lost on the sports end of the story. Well, except  we forgot to mention that in tennis scoring, “love” means zero. Yeah, I get that that’s kind of an important point for a book titled Love All, but now you know.

Get it on…

And by “it,” I’m referring to the act of voting, ’cause, y’all, we need to get to the polls.

I am assuming that if you read my books/blog, you do not hate lesbians/trans/queer folks.  I mean if so…

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I also hope that my previous blogs about things like the Confederate flag ran off a high portion of racists.  And my Christmas blogs frequently talk about how my faith requires me to see Christ in the face of immigrants and refugees…because, duh! So, I am going to assume that most of you care about women/racial minorities/queer folks, and just the general state of humanity.  And therefore it should go without saying that you’ve got to vote.  If you can’t see how important that is even while living in our current dumpster fire, I don’t know what logical argument I can make to change your mind.

However, I’m not giving up on you. Even if you don’t have a single shit to give about this being an actual visual of America for the foreseeable future:

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I won’t try to appeal to your better angels or play the voice of reason.  I will drop down to a baser level to straight up carrot-and-stick this conversation with sex and free books.

Yeah, you heard me. Sex and free books, people.

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You see, a couple months back I was approached by lesbian romance writing heroes KG McGregor and Susan X Meagher.  They asked me if I’d be interested in submitting a short story to a collection aimed at getting out the vote. At first, my response was the same as it is to every other short story I’ve ever been asked to submit to.

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I am a novelist for a reason.  I am long-winded AF. The last time someone made me write a short story, I turned in 33,000 words.  I mean, thoughts and prayers to you, but I don’t write short stories. And I’m happy with that.

Then I watched the news some more, and was like

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Okay, so while I maintain I don’t write short stories, I also don’t sit around and do nothing while a megalomaniac despot and an army of white nationalists march across our political landscape.  So guess what?

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All in, actually.  Not only did I submit a short story for the anthology, I submitted an EROTIC short story.

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Yep, yep, yep. Me! Ms. I-Hate-Writing-Sex-Scenes turned in a sexy little number for the whole world to read (not you, Mom and Dad). My entry, called The Tie That Binds, is about what happens when a campaign director and a staffer get to cut loose in the wake of a big congressional win.  Because, come on, we all need some big congressional wins Nov 6, and when you help make that happen, you should get to celebrate in exactly the way my characters do.

Which brings me back around to my main point.  When you do your part by marching yourself down to your official polling place and pulling that lever (or pushing that button) you can have a copy of the We’ve Got The Power collection as soon as you prove you’ve lived up to your most basic civil responsibility to vote.

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Seriously, that’s the only way you get your hot little hands on this hot little book.  You cannot buy a copy anywhere. This is not some Citizen’s-United-style bullshit. It’s not for sale, and it’s never going to be. One person, one vote, one ebook.

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It’s not hard (unless you’re a minority or a student, and then voting might be kind of hard, but that’s all the more reason to do it (Illegitimi non carborundum).

But once you have voted, all you have to do is comment below, or on my FB/Twitter/Insta, and share a picture of you (or your pet) with your absentee ballot ready to mail, or at your polling place, or with your “I voted” sticker.  If you can’t do any of those things, get creative, but show me, somehow, that you voted, and then give me your email.

From there I’ll send you a link to download We’ve Got The Power, and you’ll get to enjoy exclusive works from not only me, but also some of the top names in lesbian fiction.  There are stories from KG McGregor, Susan X Meagher, Tracy Richardson, Cheryl Head, Ann McMan, Trailblazer Marianne K. Martin, J.E. Knowles, Mary Griggs, City Rizzo, Jamie Clevenger, and so many more. It’s quality, it’s fun, it’s diverse, and it’s free, just for doing something you damn well ought to be doing already.

There you have it.  I hope you care enough about humanity to vote, but even if you don’t, I’m sure you care about sex and books.  So this Election Day, let’s get it on!

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Wide Release Day!

Hello Friends,

It’s a big day for me! I am once again a new-book mom. I am thrilled to announce that Love All is now available in print and ebook wherever fine books are sold!  If you’re one of those people who prefers to buy through Kindle directly, or iTunes, or through your local book store, the time is now.  All the options are open. Go get your copy! Please?

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I started writing this book over a year ago. Along the way I got to fall in love with Jay and Sadie and Destiny and Hank and Sandy.  They became my constant companions as I traveled.  Some days I spent more time with them than I did with my family. They became real to me.  Through writing and editing and typesetting and proofreading and advanced copies and early ebooks and one super-fun book launch last week, each and every step has led me closer to this moment when my new baby is fully out into the world.

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This is it!  My work here is done.  Love All and all my friends held within its pages belong to you now.  I can’t wait to hear what you think. I will try to be patient, and not to pace like an expectant father in the waiting room of one of those old movies, but I make no promises not to keep refreshing my browser as I eagerly await your reviews.

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