Nearly a decade ago, before I had to start high-lighting my hair to cover my grays, I started a novel.

I wanted to re-tell my favorite story, Pride & Prejudice. But I wanted to flip it inside out, on its head, and make it my own. Wouldn’t it be fun to update it to modern times and make Mr. Darcy the lead and the heroine? Wouldn’t it be great to read it all in first-person and really understand the character and their every motivation?

After one of many trips to Madeline Island, I grabbed a journal and started writing. My first draft took me nearly nine months. I only had vague ideas about what to do next but all my plans were put on hold when I had a newborn to take care of and my body didn’t have enough energy for any type of thinking.

When I did resume a year later, I edited the book within an inch of its life and worked up the courage to enter it into a few contests. I learned a lot from the process and kept working. My story had a lot of holes but I had ideas and plunged into sequels.

I ended up loving the immediate sequel even more than the original story. But what would I do? It didn’t make sense as a stand alone novel. I had a lightbulb moment one day and reworked the entire sequel into Anchored In The Bay (http://www.amazon.com/Anchored-Bay-True-North-Book-ebook/dp/B00SZFZXWW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1424629016&sr=8-1&keywords=anchored+in+the+bay).

I still loved my concept for my original story and refused to give up on it. So what to do? Reworking that story into third person eliminated a lot of the problems I had with the narrative and opened up more possibilities for the characters.

This project has been a true labor of love and I’m delighted to announce that Tiny Island Summer, the second of four books in my True North series, will be released this August!