In November 2016, I published a blog entitled "And So It Begins" that discussed what it was like to have just written the opening paragraphs for my new book, Aftereffects. Today, I am incredibly proud/excited/verklempt to announce that that Aftereffects will be published on October 8!

Two years in the making, this book was a very personal adventure. I wrote (and rewrote and rewrote!) every single day from November 2016 to this very morning, just to get it exactly right. This book didn't fly out (like I so enviously hear authors say from time to time!) - it bled out.

And while the main characters, Keir and Selene, get perhaps my favorite Happily Ever After - lucky me - I get one too. Because as I finalized the last edit this morning, I can't stop smiling. I am so very happy with the result.

I’m sure it’s true that if you spend enough time with a writer, you’ll eventually show up in their work. When I look back on my own small body of work, I see reflections of so many people in my life, so many of their stories, and our stories.

Of all of my books, Aftereffects most baldly tells these stories. So my greatest and most heartfelt thanks goes to all of those whose presence in my life has given me a rich and beautiful palette from which to draw from and, more importantly, a rich and beautiful palette of relationships and experiences that feed my soul every single day.

Can't wait to share it with you! Here is the description:

What could be more terrifying than falling in love with the person who is your good place? Maybe realizing just a smidge too late that there can be dire consequences to becoming your best friend’s lover.

The lives of Keir Stevens and Selene Georgiou serendipitously collide midspan on San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, one jarring step ahead of fate. He’s a temporary transplant from Seattle; she’s facing the biggest career opportunity of her life. They have no notion of the common thread that connects them.

As they come to discover they share a similar adversity, their relationship evolves from a fun and frivolous infatuation with nowhere to go into a true friendship with sincerity, humor, and respect at its heart.

It’s awfully hard not to fall in love with that—even if you’re pretty darn certain you shouldn’t.

But when love and friendship suffer their own devastating collision—their interests brutally conflicting—the consequences of blurring the lines between the two suddenly become real. In the end, which one will be the stronger? And more important, can either survive?

Aftereffects is a stand-alone, dual-POV adult contemporary romance about the things we choose in life out of all the things that are beyond our choosing—a tale of love and friendship, of time and how we spend it, and of the inner wars that ultimately show us what really matters.