THE FINAL BOSS BOOK! Title change, cover reveal, and release date!

READERS! IT’S HAPPENING! IT’S REALLY HAPPENING!

While I had planned to announce The Daughter‘s release date and reveal the cover last week, it just felt…wrong. And I didn’t know why. This is going to be the very last time I’m with Sophie. While I’ve been writing other books, as well, Sophie has been my main focus, my work wife, since I started writing the serialized version of The Boss in…was it 2013? I can’t remember. Either way, for the better part of a decade.

It was difficult to decide on a cover. I kept staring at it, going, “the title just doesn’t look right. None of this looks right. Is that even how ‘daughter’ is spelled? It looks so…wrong.”

I realized that out of all the titles in the series, none of them, not a single one, had referred to Sophie. For example:

The Boss referred to Neil.
The Girlfriend referred to Valerie.
The Bride was Emma.
The Ex was Stephen.
Obviously, Olivia is The Baby.
The Sister referred to Molly
The Boyfriend was El-Mudad

Sophie has never had top billing. When you read The Daughter, it’ll be clear who it refers to. But that person isn’t Sophie.

So, without further ado, the title and the cover for the final book in The Boss series will be (already ruined for you by the social media preview):

I can hear the shrieks of a thousand completists. Why, why, why have I broken the theme? WHY?! And also, the covers used to be only black and white and now you’ve got this lipstick-red going on? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY KINDLE?!

You may also notice that my pen name ain’t anywhere on that cover. All of the changes, the title, the red, no author name? It’s all because Sophie is the star. I’m giving her the spotlight.

If you weren’t here in the dark times of the Fifty Shades of Grey recaps, you might not be aware that though at the height of the madness I was receiving a hundred thousand or more hits per day, but I wasn’t making any money. I didn’t believe I deserved to get paid for my writing, that I was lucky enough to have people want to read it. After all, I’d lost my New York publishing contracts, my family was on food stamps, I was making about $200 a month editing for a small publisher and getting royalty checks for new novellas that never broke two figures. When I started writing this series, my goal was to write the anti-Fifty Shades and maybe someone would want to download it if I distributed it as an ebook. I had high hopes that the sequel, The Girlfriend, might actually sell a few copies.

It sold 20,000 copies its first week.

Today, The Boss and its sequels have sold over a million copies in the United States. It’s been a bestseller internationally, having hit shelves in Brazil, Portugal, Italy, France, and I’m sure other places I can’t think of without opening the folder on my computer labeled “foreign rights contracts.” This series changed my life, gave me a whole new career, and I couldn’t have done it without Sophie. I have no idea where she came from. I don’t know anyone like her. She just appeared in my head fully formed and I got the joy of watching her navigate everything I threw at her. This is her finale, so I’m giving her the send-off she deserves.

I mentioned before that I wouldn’t be releasing this book until after the inauguration in January. So, the official release date for Sophie is January 21st, 2021, or 1/21/2021 which has to be good luck somehow, right? It will hit Radish the same day as a new “season” of The Boss there. I’ll have pre-order information as soon as it’s available; in the meantime, keep on rockin’ in the free world.