It’s been a busy September! Not only the whole back-to-school-during-a-pandemic thing, or the is-football-happening-or-not thing (my husband is a high school football ref, which is the reason this is such a hot topic in our household). Not only because September marks the beginning of “busy season” at my day job. Nope, I’m not saying it’s busy for all those reasons, if you can believe it.
I’m talking about book releases! I released THREE books this month! First was Picture This, the grand finale of the Bryant Brothers series, which is earning reviews such as this one:
“This well written character driven story keeps you involved with the main couple while interspersing updates of the previous pairs. I found the whole family delightful and realistic, loved Grandma Bryant. The wrap up of the series just made my heart happy.”
That was followed by the release of Love Me Always, an anthology that a bunch of authors stepped up and put together to express our support of racial equality through our words. It’s a very powerful anthology, and we are donating all royalties to the NAACP Legal Fund.
And lastly, I released Lyall, which was part of the first volume of Dark Moon Falls stories (a shared world written by a bunch of different authors, that’s full of wolf shifters and witches and a few vampires). This book, according to my editor, is my best yet. Just sayin’. If you’re curious, there’s an except below the pic of the cover…
“You mean you were seriously considering moving back home?” His heart gave a funny little leap, the way it always did when Natalia showed up yet again and he allowed himself to hope that this time she’d stay.
But she was already shaking her head before he could even fully ask the question. “No. Lyall, please don’t do this. Not now. We’ve been through this so many times, I don’t know why you think things will change.”
“Because you’re from here, Natalia. And I know you aren’t a wolf, but witches have that same sense of family, of home, of—”
“Not all of us.”
“I think you’re just afraid.”
She took another drink.
“You’re afraid of us,” he persisted. Of what we could be. What we should be.”
“Lyall, I gave you my virginity and, yes, my heart, but that was a long time ago. We were both too young to understand what we were doing. And even back then, I never intended to stay here. I told you that. I’ve always told you that.”
And he’d been stupid enough to believe he could change her mind. That their love could overpower whatever the hell she was running from in her head.
He watched as she drained her glass. Then she placed it on the bar and dug around in the leather bag she’d draped over the back of the barstool. Extracting a twenty, she tucked it into his tip jar.
Lyall plucked it back out and tossed it at her. “Keep your big-city money. It’s not any good here.”
She slipped off her seat and straightened her spine and looked him in the eye. Even in the dimly lit bar he could see the pain swirling in those brown depths. Whatever the hell she’d been running from, she still hadn’t run far enough.
And then she left. Without the twenty.
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