Make a Wish!

Out of Breath is now in the hands of my editor at Amazon Publishing. After months of writing, it truly came down to the last two weeks.

I created a writing schedule. And... I didn't follow it. I couldn't do it. I cannot write on demand. I cannot produce based on a deadline. But I can write fueled by Dew and the natural adrenaline of panic. I locked myself away in a beach house in California (no, I didn't suffer) for a week, and wrote. Slept a couple of hours, drank some Dew, and wrote some more.

I strategized with my talented and brutally honest beta team. Developed some major plot changes that made me so excited I couldn't wait to add them in, restructuring the story-line until it all interconnected seamlessly. Elizabeth and I were a fabulous team in our tireless (which means sleepless) efforts to make Out of Breath that much better, and we reviewed all thirty-seven chapters until we were thrilled with the results. But... I still had the last three chapters to write with time running out.

I continued to write on the flight home, spending every minute of the five and a half hour flight hovering over my computer. And when I still wasn't done, I finished the last twelve pages at a friend's apartment in Boston so I wouldn't have to drive too far from the airport. Forty Chapters, Four Hundred Eighty-Two Double-Spaced Pages, and One Hundred Thirty-Five Thousand Seven Hundred Nineteen words later... I was done!

The last three chapters still need a little more love, but after reading them the next morning after I sent them to Amazon, I had tears in my eyes.

Out of Breath is a beautifully powerful conclusion to Emma's story, and I couldn't be happier with how it all comes to be, just as it should. Their voices still echo within me, long after typing the final words. I spent four years with these characters, and I will miss them now that I am letting them go.

Life isn't perfect, and we're all flawed. I hope you will appreciate all that makes Emma perfectly flawed in the final chapters of this book.

What now?

I have some crazy editing to do with Amazon on Out of Breath. I'll be working with their editing team to smooth out the edges, and make this story as phenomenal as is intended. I'll admit, the thought of editing makes my stomach twist into incy little knots. It's my least favorite part. But it will all be worth it when you read it in JUNE 2013!!

And I'll be making quite a few public appearances in 2013! I have a new addition to my team, although she isn't technically new. Emily has been one of my closest friends for years (more like a sister honestly)! Along with being a beta reader for all three books, she is now my marketing manager. She is going to make certain I get to see all of you in some way or another because she knows just how much my readers mean to me!

We have so much planned for 2013, I can't wait to share it with you as it happens!!

And... I'm already starting to write again! I have to listen to the voices in my head or else I'll go crazy! Uh... I may already be there. But you love me anyway, right?!

Today is the luckiest day of the year! Did you make a wish at 12:12 on 12.12.12?! I'm quite certain your wish will come true! Mine definitely is!