On the brink of excitement...

It's taken a while... but The Way Back audiobook has been submitted for final review to Amazon. This means that in the very near future, you will be able to have my friend Chris Kerrigan read (and sing!) The Way Back to you! Yay!

Chris has an amazing voice -- both an amazing reading voice and an amazing singing voice -- so you will probably be ecstatic to learn that he has actually taken my song lyrics to Flannel Lobster's tune "Uptempo, Down" and put the words to music. This is included in the audiobook, but I've also made it available on my website.

As Chris continues to bring my novels to life (Just Whistle is up next!), he'll be doing the same for Flannel Lobster's songs, and since the band is really gaining in popularity, I felt them deserving of a website of their own. You can link to it HERE, where "Uptempo, Down" is available for your listening enjoyment, as is an excerpt from an interview with the band and (coming soon) their discography in its entirety.

Another fun thing that is happening is this: Rob Connolly is nearly finished reading Kick It One More Time so that novel will soon be available as an audiobook as well! Like Chris, Rob has a phenomenal voice and he did a lot of research in order to voice Sebastian the way I imagined him.

Speaking of Bas... I love him. And even though it literally hurts my heart when people criticize him, I understand that not everyone enjoys him. In my mind, he is the equivalent of Jamie Fraser. I want to know what he looks like, sounds like, smells like, etc. all of the time. I don't get tired of him.

My mom gets tired of him.

Mary, my magnificent marketing manager, does not get tired of him. She prefers Bert, but she has an appreciation for Bas and enjoys his humor and artistic moodiness.

My mom has a theory that "old ladies" get tired of Bas because it is an age thing. I would be curious to learn if this is an accurate theory. If you are a self-proclaimed "old lady" and have read one or more of my novels starring Sebastian (Kick It One More Time and Running Through the Words are the two that are currently available to the public), I am hoping to hear from you. There's no need to be overly harsh in your criticism of Sebastian as this generally just makes me question my worth and ability to write and causes me to wonder if I ought to completely abandon all of my unpublished manuscripts and leave them to be published posthumously decades from now... but if you don't like him and just want to write and say, "He doesn't do it for me. I prefer [insert other character here] because [insert reason here]," that is fine.

It's not as if I'm expecting Sebastian to be everyone's favorite. That's not it at all. I just never expected him to be viewed so harshly by people because he's such a good and kind person. Flawed, yes, but good and kind! Then again, he is the lead singer of Flannel Lobster and deals with this sort of criticism all the time. Essentially, real life is emulating fiction, I guess.

Here's another fun thing for you to have on your radar: I'm going to be releasing Time Jumps this winter/spring. Possibly really soon, possibly a little bit farther down the road. Only time will tell! You'll have to pay attention to social media and blog posts and wait for an announcement because it may end up being a spur-of-the-moment type thing.

I think those are all of my announcements for the moment. If you've read Just Whistle, you probably realize that the next Flannel Lobster song to be released will be "Kick It One More Time," so that should be thrilling for absolutely everyone. Me, most of all! I wrote additional stanzas for Chris! It's going to be so fun to hear what he comes up with!

Okay. For real, I am done now. Sorry this one's long. I haven't written for a while, though, and I had things to say.