The Day Before Kickoff

So - tomorrow is the big day!

It's not an 'official' book launch but I am about to share a part of my work that no one except a chosen few have seen. Cougarette in the Country is very important to me because it introduces the evolution of CeeCee Banks - a character I have grown to love very much.

When I wrote The Cougarette, I never expected people to read it. I certainly hadn't expected such a positive reaction - so positive that they would want to hear more about these figments of my imagination. In fact, I already had an entirely unrelated book idea in mind as my next project. (I'm still going to execute a first draft on that idea later this year but that subject is for another blog entry. I digress.)

So, I found myself tasked to deliver in this second book. I had to dig deep so that I could allow the characters to grow in directions I wasn't that crazy about, to be honest. While preparing the first draft, there was a period of two days where I was pissed at Jay. Like, REALLY pissed.

Then the next day, he'd be my favorite person in the world while I put CeeCee on timeout in my brain. It was so frustrating for two reasons:

1) It complicated my writing.
2) Being angry at imaginary people might be a diagnosis for borderline psychosis.

But write, I did. This book is going to have a different tone than the first. Where in the first book, CeeCee and Jay are new and fresh, Cougarette in the Country takes the reader a year into the future and shows us a relationship of familiarity. There is some crust to the bread at this stage. Some of it was hard to write. I won't lie - I cried a few times. I cursed several times. But overall, it incited emotion from me and I am hoping it does that for you, my precious readers.

I hope to read your feedback during the event tomorrow (link to the invite is below). I'm thrilled you are still on this ride with me. Mama loves you!

https://www.facebook.com/events/88134...