I know I've said I finished this before, but now I really have finished the final draft of my young adult novel and have some idea of how I'm going to open the next in the series. I'd sort of wanted to do each one with Devynn telling the stories, but now I'm not so sure I will do it that way. I feel comfortable in her character, but I should get to know each one whose story I want to do. So I'm going to let Daveena tell her own story. She's Devynn's cousin - who was taken away from her mother by her grandparents when it seemed as though her mom was going to die from complications of the birth. Her dad was, at that point, MIA overseas. Her mom survives, but isn't able to find out where her baby is. Much more to that story which you find out about when Devynn reads her mother's diary.

I'm thinking that something is going to happen to Daveena's adoptive parents who by this time have had a couple kids of their own, and whose relatives won't want to be bothered with any of them, so they'll unload the lot of them on Daveena's birth parents. And Devynn will be there when it all goes down. Should be fun! I'm a seat of the pants type of writer, so we'll see what adventures the girls will have as they occur to me.

I have 430 pages of the next romance in my series done. Once I got past my hang up of what hospital to send the baby and her mother to, it all started to come together nicely. I know, in fiction, you can do whatever, right? But I've set the story in Newport, RI, and the hospital there doesn't have a nursery or a neonatal ICU. My mind was stuck on everything being in Newport, but in the end, I finally bit the bullet and sent mother and daughter to Providence.

While writing this third story - Stormi's story -. I figured out why Irvy Woodworth, Joleigh-Anna's fiance, acted as he did after Matty died, and so have done some more revisions to The Resurrection of Joleigh-Anna Kelmann. What I've included really helps to tie all three books together. I'm really happy with them now. For in Stormi's story you get to see Matty longer than in Thomi's, and see what leads up to his accident.

I'm still trying to decide whether I should offer a book free. The advice is, I'm sure you've heard, is to give away the first book to generate interest in the others. Since I have just the two right now, and am not pumping out a novel every other week or month, I'm reluctant to do that.

All For The Love Of Thomi is much longer and more involved than The Resurrection of Joleigh-Anna Kelmann. So, I hesitate to give it away for free on a permanent basis. So I'm going to do giveaways on Amazon for both of them shortly. Giveaways from Goodreads are too expensive. Can't figure out why I should pay to give my books away for free.
Discovered some YA beta readers on Twitter, but haven't contacted any yet. I know I should do it now since I need to start thinking about launching the book. I'm overwhelmed just thinking about it. How do you do that when you have no reader base? No list?

Didn't do a launch for any of the others. Just published to KDP and Draft2Digital and let it go at that. Now I have to learn to do it right--and I'm scared. But determined to give it a whirl. So, we'll see.

I also revised Ride 'Em Tough and am much happier with it. I'll keep the original up and post the revised version on its own page.

Posted some new poems I did for NaPoWriMo. Didn't do one a day, however. Getting the novels done and other stuff got in the way of that, and frankly, with poetry, I have to be inspired.

Until next time, keep writing and reading!