“Maybe it should have been obvious by the way my bumper collided so passionately with his that the universe had something particular in mind for us. In hindsight, it was. In fact, it was the perfect metaphor for the way our lives came together–jarring and serendipitous–and for the way our eventual untangling left its own sort of damage.”

So begins the first chapter of Aftereffects, the third and final (?) installment of the Ripple Effects series. And as any writer will agree, Day One is exhilarating – daunting, in that you have so much runway ahead of you and so many questions still to be answered, and great, in that how incredible is it to be able to do this a little bit every day?

But Day One isn’t really Day One. In truth, Day One started months ago with a few kernels of an idea. In this case, the first kernel was Selene Georgiou, a take-no-prisoners, straight shooter kind of girl, and one of my favorite characters from Ripple Effects.

And she’ll need a hero. What I love about writing is that the needs of one character create, by necessity, the only other character who can answer those needs precisely. As such, came Keir Stevens, a man so beautiful, so funny, and so incredibly close to my heart that he can easily stand shoulder to shoulder with Dan Moore and Jamie Callahan. That’s a tall order.

As for their circumstance – well, that’s where life comes in. This book is inspired by my dad, who I lost on Oct. 10, the very same day that Sound Effects was released. The yin and yang of that has not escaped me. So in Aftereffects, I honor men for whom the call of parenthood is nothing less than sacred, a reflection of one of the most amazing men I have ever known.

It’s a long road from chapter one to happily ever after. But in the hiatus of publishing Sound Effects, of which I am enormously proud, I truly missed writing. I missed telling stories. And I can say from experience that you never know just where a story will take you once you begin, but today I took the first step. And it was awesome.

L.J. Greene