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 ❤

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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.

“My Life is What I Make It. I Choose to Rise and Take It.”

For me, writing and music have always been inextricably linked. Heck, I started writing books in the first place because of someone I met in band camp. But I also listen to music while I write my stories, and think about where it needs to go.

As I’ve been starting 2021 with a renewed vigor for life (read my 2020 reflections HERE), I’ve also been thinking about how I want to continue the sequel to my time-travel coming-of-age book, Forgetting What I Couldn’t Remember.

All of my books pictured here, with Forgetting What I Couldn’t Remember front and center!

This book is a challenge, because while the first book was about claiming justice for bullying and other struggles, the second book is about forgiveness. And that’s something I’m still working on in real-time too. Granted, writing these books have made it a lot easier to forgive, having finally laid it all bare for the world to see. But I’ve decided that I’m finally ready to let go. Holding on to this stuff isn’t doing me any good – and I’m finally expressing it (and myself) the way I’ve always wanted to.

As I continue to plug away at my draft of the second and final installment of The Rewind Duology (Forgiving What I Couldn’t Change), I’ve been putting myself in Vera’s shoes. She’s angry, frustrated, and about a hundred other things that like me, she struggles to articulate. That’s why I love this song by Tonight Alive (my favorite line of which, is the title of this blog post).

It’s all about knowing yourself, where you want to go in life, and being brave enough to take the reins and get yourself there. That’s where real success begins, and wanting it isn’t enough – you have to be willing to use setbacks as strengths too.

If you like friends-to-lovers romance, coming of age, and getting even with middle school bullies, I think you’ll love this book as much as I loved writing it.

“I know I will survive this, I’ll be the strongest person I know.”

– Tonight Alive

As for my character Vera Bartlet, she’s got to forgive others and forgive herself for falling prey to her own struggles as ling as she did. It’s a tough journey, but I have a feeling she’s going to break through very soon. If you want to “meet” Vera for yourself, you can find Forgetting What I Couldn’t Remember on Amazon HERE.

Listen to “World Away” by Tonight Alive HERE.

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