Hit Summer With Your Best Shot 6/21 – SEQUEL PREMIERE

Happy Memorial Day Weekend! In the spirit of this occasion of remembering those who gave their lives for America (may they always be honored and remembered), I thought I’d make a pretty big announcement of my own.

The sequel to my time-travel coming-of-age romance Forgetting What I Couldn’t Remember is called Forgiving What I Couldn’t Change. And you can read it on June 21st (yes – the first day of Summer). Summer isn’t just a season; if you’ve read book one, you know that Summer is the name of the biggest grade-school-baddie-turned-psychopathic-criminal. So of course, I figured the best way to forgive her once and for all was to drop this second and final installment on the first day of her season.

Forgiving What I Couldn’t Change actually takes place in the SoCal fall, but that’s basically still warm weather (with the addition of pumpkin spiced everything). It was really fun to situate the characters in that season of blending the savory with the summertime. That also mimics the interesting blend of spastic daytime patterns as experienced by Vera and Fader in the virtual reality world they get trapped in.

The book will be available in ebook, paperback, and eventually, audiobook – narrated by the amazing Chelsea Kwoka. She voiced book 1 and hit it out of the park, so I knew we absolutely had to work together again.

To catch up on book 1, you can find it on Amazon HERE. I always like to tell people how personal both books are to me (but the first book especially – because it’s basically me traveling back in time to enact some justice on my old bullies).

I also have (what I hope) is a fun book trailer on YouTube all about book 1 – care to take a look? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUUTZ820GTI

Thank you so much for all your continued support. Comment below with more content you’d like to see from me. I could talk about my writing for ages, but I know that lifestyle stuff is important too, of course!

I’ll leave you with a quick spoiler-free passage from the sequel that I particularly enjoy. This is a moment between Fader and Vera while navigating the digital reality world:

Between the sound of the falling acid just outside, and the repetitive drip-drip-drip of hidden water somewhere in the cave, the silence was bearable. But only for so long. 

            “I don’t bite, you know.” 

            Fader huffed. “That hasn’t been proven. You looked like you were in enough pain to bite me if I hadn’t have given you that cloth to chomp on instead.”

            I rolled my eyes, even though the gesture may have been left unseen in the faint neon halo light. “That’s not entirely true.”

            “You sure? Because I can’t stitch up my own wounds. Don’t think I’d have the stomach for it.” 

            “What I’m sure of right now is that… I want you.”

            He froze, like being stung by an unseen predator. “What?”

            “Want you next to me, I meant. Yeah, like, scoot in. I’m cold.” Turning away momentarily, I prayed that Freudian slip didn’t just damage everything good we had going on. In a virtual reality world built on real-world death, you’d be surprised at how hard good stuff was to find.

            Before he could find a proper rebuttal, he moved closer to my side, wrapping his arm around my bare shoulders as shivers ran up my spine. “Okay, you have me. Is that all you wanted?”

            The ambiguity in his words wasn’t lost on me, so I treaded lightly. “It’s definitely a step in the right direction.”

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Life Doesn’t Come with Cheat Codes.

Hello friends! I’m writing today with some VERY exciting news about my yet-to-be-published book.

Before anyone else, I’m going to let you see my book cover and cover blurb. How cool is that?

But first, a little background: So this newest book, Forgiving What I Couldn’t Change (The Rewind Duology Book 2) is the sequel to Forgetting What I Couldn’t Remember. Both books deal heavily with coming of age, struggles with bullies, and finding yourself amidst the noise. Vera Bartlet is the main character, and in book one, she has to track down her missing dad while dealing with issues like time travel, dating, and learning to adult. If you like snark and clever tagline, you’d probably like this book, and you can find it on Amazon HERE.

Here’s the blurb for book 2:

Life doesn’t come with cheat codes.

Vera Bartlet finally lands her dream job after rescuing her dad from the psychotic bullies who held him captive. Despite dealing with the recurring trauma from being bullied and the psychological struggles surrounding it, Vera’s moving in a much better direction. With time travel under her belt, happily engaged friends, and an improved relationship with her previously estranged Uncle Edgar, life is stable – until the time machine gets stolen.
Vera’s family worries that a machine immune to the limits of time and space in the wrong hands would spell disaster for more than just their family. But when she’s quite literally dragged into the epicenter of the nefarious operation, Vera gets thrown into the very same virtual reality world that imprisoned her dad for the better part of a decade.

This place isn’t like anywhere Vera’s been before. Sporadic sky patterns with a deadly acid nightfall, man-eating purple-blooded wolf creatures, and an avatar with totally unnecessary upgrades is only the beginning of what she has to deal with. Her only saving grace is the frustratingly attractive Fader, who’s been in the game longer than she has and knows a way out.

Can Vera make it out of the game alive, forgive her bullies, and level up before her whole world glitches?

AND HERE’S THE COVER…

Seriously, how cool is this?!?! I’m obsessed with this cover. My designer really nailed this one.

As of now, I’m planning far a soft-release, maybe later next month if all goes to plan. But I’m not making any formal announcements yet as I’m still in the editing process right now. Even the cover may be subject to change depending on how everything is laid out, but I’m really excited to see how it goes.

There’s just so much that goes into all this, and I’m really hoping that it’ll all go smoothly, but the key is to just keep rolling with it and not panic. But then again, that’s also just life. And lately, I’ve been really bogged down with all my freelancing work on top of it all. And getting out of burnout is really, freaking difficult. I’ll probably blog about that soon too – but today is not the day.

In the meantime, if you want to join my review team, you can do so at this link: http://eepurl.com/df6qqf

Thank you so much for all your continued support! Angelina signing off for now, but I’m never too far away. Comment below to connect or follow me on Instagram and Tiktok.

I Finished the First Draft of My Latest Book!

Forgiveness isn’t linear, and neither was writing this book. I wish I could tell you it was straightforward, super easy, and so much fun. But that’s not totally true 🐳✨

It was actually a lot of thinking, plotting, and handling my issues in real time. I forced myself to write this sequel because after finishing Forgetting What I Couldn’t Remember, I felt that all-too-relatable pull of another story floating just below the surface. And I knew I still had some old hurts that weren’t fully handled yet either. This book gave me the creative license to do just that. When you read it, you’ll know that Vera’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences very much match mine. We’re not completely the same, but we’re definitely more similar than we are different 😅

What I hope to show through all this, is that forgiveness is a choice you make. At the end of this book when everything comes to a head, Vera has a choice to make. You’ll have to read the book to find out what she chooses, but I can promise you that you’ll like how things end up. As for me, in my life right now, I’m finally in a good place. I’ve broken away from my past, and I’m so ready to step into my greatness (had to quote #julieandthephantoms there because you might know by now it’s currently my favorite show). 

Writers, tell me which of your books challenged you the most. Did it help you work through your issues? This one (and the prequel – on Amazon HERE) definitely did for me ☀️💕

This book challenged me in so many ways, but I’m so glad I chased those ideas. As I mentioned, this book almost didn’t happen! But I really think it sums everything up in a much more organic way than book 1 did. And that’s largely because I actually have forgiven my old bullies (and it only took two books and ten years to get there!).

Thank you so much for reading this far, and if you’d like to join my ARC team ahead of my next release (to read my newest book before anyone else) you can do that HERE.

Forgiving What I Couldn’t Change is the second and final installment of Vera Bartlet’s journey… and this time… she’s the one stuck in the virtual reality world. It’s set to be released later this summer.

Listen to my Latest Podcast Interview HERE!

This morning, I got to be a guest speaker on WNRI’s Author Hour, with my fellow Association of Rhode Island Authors Board Member Wayne Barber. I answered all kinds of questions about my writing process, as well as offering some opinions about current events and publishing in general.

It’s always fun reflecting on how far I’ve come, because I remember starting the publishing thing for no other reason than I had a story I was dabbling with. I didn’t set out to publish my first book; I swear it happened totally accidentally. And it’s for a very amusing reason, LOL.

If you’d like to take a listen to hear all about this and more, you can do so at THIS LINK HERE.

Additionally, I am so pleased to say that I’ve hit the 95k word mark on my latest book, the sequel to my time-travel coming-of-age story Forgetting What I Couldn’t Remember. The sequel will be called Forgiving What I Couldn’t Change, and I’ll have ARC’s available pretty soon, so if you want to be the first to hear about that, join my review team HERE.

This one is so important to me, because I’m finally coming to terms with the bullying I lived through from ages 5-14, and how that profoundly affected my outlook on life. But luckily, there are so many healthy ways to adapt and grow even though that was extremely difficult at the time. Writing this sequel, and the prequel before it, has helped me immensely. If you want to read book one of the Rewind Duology where Vera Bartlet time-travels back to middle school to teach the bullies a lesson, you can grab a copy of it HERE.

Life is about growth and change, after all. And I’m so grateful for the opportunities I’ve been given. Thank you for reading this far, and feel free to share a bit about yourself in the comments. Tell me something you’ve GROWN through that felt awful at the time, but now is a source of strength ❤

Meet the Characters of My Latest Book

Have you read my coming-of-age time travel yet? If not, well, maybe this blog post will convince you. Besides the fact that I literally wrote my old middle school bullies into the story, and then cosplayed as a couple of them (yes, seriously, keep on reading below), the story is romance and family drama all rolled into one. Oh yeah – and all the awkwardness of growing up and stuff is front-and-center too.

“Maybe getting older lets you finally see all sides of the dice – not just the ones that are facing up.”

Vera Bartlet is a soon-to-be college graduate with absolutely no idea how messy her life is about to become. It’s not just the job search looming on the horizon or her lack of a boyfriend that’s got her stomach in knots – rather, her dad has been missing for almost a decade, and no one knows what happened to him.

Click HERE to “Meet” the characters of my book, cosplayed by me 😉

When Uncle Edgar mysteriously arrives back onto the scene, he comes armed with some interesting new ideas about what may have happened to Vera’s dad – and an even more revolutionary idea of how to find him. With nothing short of bending time and space, Edgar sends Vera back in time in the hopes that she might find the clues they need to get her dad home.

As she sifts through the mangled pieces of reality and her altered memories of middle school drama become jumbled in between truth and fantasy, Vera has to choose which elements of her past should stay in the past, and which she might like to incorporate into her future. Time travel is never simple, and there are always side effects – but in this case, it might just hold the key to finding her dad. Will Vera stay sane long enough to find her dad and make peace with the bullies who made her miserable?

Book 1 of The Rewind Duology, Forgetting What I Couldn’t Remember

I had way too much fun dressing up like my characters, as seen in the hyperlink above. Seriously, they’re a unique bunch. And Summer’s makeup took FOREVER to wash off. But it was so worth it, LOL.

The sequel to this book will be available hopefully later this year, but if you wanna catch up and read Forgetting What I Couldn’t Remember ahead of time, you can do that HERE. It’s available in ebook, paperback, and audiobook if that’s more your thing 😉

And oh boy, let me tell you – the plot twists in book 2 are BONKERS. Literally, there are a few things that will drop your jaw. I’m honestly blown away I even thought up these things in the first place, but I’m super excited about it. Now, I just need the motivation and focus to finish. If you have any tips to share for crossing that finish line, feel free to share below. I would truly appreciate it.