What the heck is taking so long?

I've been answering readers questions one at a time, so I thought I'd write a entry for the masses. I'm going to answer the question that I'm sure is on a lot of your minds. "What the heck is taking so long?" I admit, this year has not been my best publishing year. I had all these plans for book releases, and then life got in the way. I've always heard if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. It seems it's my curse. When I try to plan stuff out, something always occurs that ends up destroying said plans. I've learned to go with the flow and not plan ahead, but in this business I can't really be like that. Recently my life has been somewhat stressful. For a creative person, this can be our kryptonite.


 My father has kidney disease and over the summer was rushed to the hospital for loss of blood. They ended up having to give him four blood transfusions. I am constantly worried about him, and this event spiked my stress. Next, in August I had surgery, which was stressful because it was the first time I've ever been in the hospital. It took me about a week to recover. Later in August, my husband and I put in an offer for a new house. The process was dragged out for three months! I was beyond stressed over the whole ordeal. Finally, on November 13th, we closed on the house and started to move. Within a week, one of my cats (with diabetes) ended up passing away. If you should know one thing about me, it's that I am a HUGE animal lover. The loss of our cat Macy broke my heart. Things are now slowly starting to get back on track now. In no way am I using any of these occurrences as excuses. I just wanted to let you guys know I haven't been deliberately avoiding my writing. 


Hexed - This book is the one I am most apologetic for. I am an avid reader myself and hate when books end on a cliffhanger. That being said, when Coveted ended with a cliffhanger, I did not intend to make you guys wait over a year for the next book. I was all set to release Hexed in October, had half of the book done in August or September, and then I LOST THE ENTIRE BOOK! I wanted to cry and smash my computer. Seriously! I've had to start the entire book over, and so far it's going fairly easy. I'm working on it night and day to have it to you guys by the end of December. To make it up to you guys, I'm including a never before published short story, and the first chapter of Gwen's sixth book, Resurrected. 


Turning Home - You guys may or may not remember this one. I told you about it waaaaay back in July. At the time, I had the first part of the book done and edited. All that was left was for me to write the second part. Should have been easy, right? Wrong. For some unknown reason, I could not get Brooke and Dylan's story right. I restarted the second part at least nine times. NINE! I wanted it to be right and was happy erasing 30K if it meant I could do a better job. I finally figured out their story and have the entire book written. Now, I just have to go back through and add a few sections to make it complete. I plan to have this published in December or January at the latest.


A Christmas Yet to Come Anthology- I'm not behind on this one, but I thought I'd add it to the list. If you've read my other anthologies, you'll be familiar with this book. It's a collection of nine short stories. We write these books for our loyal readers who know and love our characters. This will be the first Anna Avery short story, and is set to release in about two weeks.


So, from the bottom of my heart I want to apologize for making you guys wait. It bothers me more than you know. I want my books published just as much as you guys do. They do me no good sitting on my computer. I hope that once these books are published you'll think they were worth the wait. Thanks for sticking with me.