New Adult Book Club discussion

Helllooo New Adult Book Club! Thanks for having me as your guest this weekend. Being a guest post author is a lot like being a standup comedian. You show up and tell your best jokes and sometimes all you hear is crickets. Don't be shy. If you have a question, fire away.

I'm sure it's a busy weekend wherever you are. This is a crazy weekend in Seattle where I live. The focus of almost every Seattleite, including yours truly, is the football game tomorrow. As American football fans know, we're in the middle of football playoffs that lead up to the Super Bowl. The Seattle Seahawks play the San Francisco 49ers tomorrow in the NFC conference championship for a spot in the Super Bowl. I'm ordinarily not a huge football fan, but if you live here you can't resist Hawks fever. Yesterday was even dubbed "Blue Friday."

I got up this morning and tried to plan my wardrobe so I'd have the appropriate green and blue to wear tomorrow. It's ubiquitous here. The peer pressure is crazy. If you're not wearing it, you are so out of it. My Seahawks shirt is in the wash. Looks like I may have to do a load a laundry today. My husband said, "Why do wash? Just go buy another one." Gotta love a guy like that. The problem is finding one. Seahawks gear sells out fast. So that's my weekend—desperately in search of a Seahawks T-shirt.

Okay, I'm going to try and anticipate a question to get the ball rolling. Readers generally like to know where I get my ideas. So I'll share the story of how I came up with the idea for the Reckless Series, which gives a glimpse into my thought process.

The university my daughter attends invited me to sign my funny romantic suspense series for Mom's Weekend last April. If you like romances with a lot of humor, sexy alpha heroes, and a bit of suspense, you might like my Agent Ex series which features spies reuniting with their exes. You can check out all my books here on my Goodreads page, https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Anyway, the kid and I bought the official matching mother-daughter Mom's Weekend sweatshirts, donned our university T-shirts and jeans and we were off to the student bookstore for the signing.

My daughter lived in a dorm on the edge of Greek row. The weather that weekend was particularly nasty. Windy, which was normal. And snowing, which was not so normal for that time of year. As my daughter and I came back to her dorm from the signing, bundled in our coats and sweatshirts, I spotted a group of moms and daughters walking down Greek row. One pair stood out—a mom and daughter dressed identically in short, tight leather skirts, stiletto heels, and figure-hugging blouses. No coats. Shivering like crazy and tottering along the uneven, hilly sidewalk. Mom's hair was long and styled like daughter's. Mom obviously hadn't realized she was no longer in college. It was clear she was trying to be a college coed again. Every time a young man walked past her hips got a little more swing in them. And the idea for Ellie's mom was born—a woman who can't let go of her youthful glory days and competes with her daughter for everything, including men. Especially young, college-aged men.

I brainstormed a story idea for the characters and came up with several more ideas for new adult novels, including one that revolved around fathers. I'd read a few new adult novels earlier that spring and fallen in love with the genre.

I thought the first book of the series would focus on Mom's Weekend, but as I developed it the story took a turn and started with the first week of class in the fall. I combined my ideas into one long story that started with a focus on fathers and children and ends with moms and daughters. The final book in the trilogy, Reckless Together, takes place around Mom's Weekend and has a theme of mothers and daughters and mothers and sons. Ellie's mom is finally on scene. I hope readers of the series will be surprised and pleased by the twists and turns in the book and the resolution of Logan and Ellie's romance. With any luck, I hope to release Reckless Together in March.

Whew! Long post. Now that I've chattered on—any questions?