Hey Guys,

I just wanted to tell you about a holiday anthology that came out at the beginning of the month.

Wish Come True
Wish Come True is a collection of stories to warm your heart over the Christmas period!
Stories from Keira Andrews, Joanna Chambers, Amy Jo Cousins,Suki Fleet, Kaje Harper, and I have a wee story in there too called Bottle Boys.



<3 <3 <3

A little bit about Bottle Boys . . .

Choked up on hormones, in preparation for trying to get knocked up (successfully, yay), I got teary a lot. Got angry a lot. Got impressed a lot. There was a lot of everything--it was quite the ride!

One morning my husband read a short article out of the newspaper about this clever guy who bought festival tickets and went, not for the music, but to collect bottles. In a weekend this guy made thousands of euros.

I was immediately inspired. How original, I thought. How smart. And then started the "what ifs". What if he had competition at the festivals? What if he had an arch-bottle-collecting-enemy? What if he slowly started respecting this other person? What if, ha, what if they fell in love?

I HAD to write a story based on bottle collecting, but I was also kind of hesitant, because, well, it's sort of weird too, right? And it does seem far out to earn so much money collecting bottles at a festival--but this article guy had done it, so it was possible . . .

Then Susan from Boys In Our Books contacted me to ask if I'd be willing to participate in an anthology for charity. Thrilled to be invited alongside these amazing other authors that had agreed (seriously, they are wonderful! I love their stories, both in this anthology and out of it), and happy that the proceeds would be going to such a great cause, I accepted.

I knew Bottle Boys was going to come to life then. Only, things got a bit tricky. The original word limit was between 10-15K. I imagined the story longer, but then, I could see it as a short-ish one too. Thankfully the lovely Susan allowed us to run over the limit, and 20-so-K later, Bottle Boys was born.

Then I got pregnant. And I thought before I had mood swing issues! During all rewrites and editing of this book I was in wildly varying states of happiness, depression, and a f-load of morning sickness.

Everything made me sick. I couldn't read more than three pages at a time. Couldn't watch anything on Netflix. Couldn't do anything but curse nausea, hate the boredom, and sleep.

Don't ask me how I got through each edit. It was grueling and one of the hardest writing I've done yet. Thankfully the editor Lenore was SUPER helpful. I can't say enough how much I appreciated her! (Big cheers also to all my beta readers!)

Despite the hormonal ups and downs, I'm happy about the story, and it was important for me--especially as it's a holiday story--that it was low on the angst, and slightly fairytale-like. Some of the plot elements are a little stretched (lets just say I did my best with the Math side, but it's not my forte, lol), but what's a Christmas tale without a bit of magic?

Ohh, and if any of you are curious about Marco in Bottle Boys, I'm happy to say I'm halfway through his novella, and I hope to have that out around Feb next year. ;)

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Another big thank you to all those who wished me well on this pregnancy! I'm happy to say my belly is growing and at week 16 I finally recovered my appetite and lust of life! :D