October 9, 2017, about 9 at night, I had sat down to make sure that everything was all set for my first romance novel, That One Small Omission, to be released on October 11th. I had specifically picked 10/11 as the release date, wanting to have a positive new anniversary in October, but not wanting it to fall on the emotionally-charged 10/9.

Imagine my surprise when I logged into Amazon, and found that it had released just a couple hours before, on 10/9. My publisher and Amazon couldn’t tell me why it released early, it just did. After some shock, I laughed, thinking that it was likely that Sam had made sure it released on 10/9, wanting me/us to a have positive anniversary on that date.

A year later, it is time to reflect on the year that has passed. In that time, I have published three romance novels.  It’s not that I wrote all three in the last year, two of them were written long ago, just re-written and edited more recently. The third novel, yes, that was finished within the last year.

Then there was Of Grief, Garlic and Gratitude. I had started writing it several years ago, but finished it within this year, had amazing editors, and now it is complete.

There have been book events for the fiction, and upcoming events for the memoir.

Now, as I reflect, it amazes me how much has happened. My goal originally was to someday have a book published, I could never have imagined that all this would happen — especially not all in one year.