Happy Book Birthday

Best Kept Secrets is five (5!) years old this week. Here's where you can find it on sale this month.

Best Kept Secrets is five years old this week. Somehow it seems so much longer since the pub date in 2019.

In Spring of 2018, editor Jenny Chen from Crooked Lane Books requested my pages after the Twitter pitch party, #Pitdark. At the time, pitching my work this way was a last resort. The previous month, my mom was admitted to hospice. My time was equally divided between caring for my mom in Indianapolis, and teaching piano at home. I drove 12 hours round trip to see her every week. I had 42 piano students and that was a full time job. When I wasn’t teaching, I was writing in the morning and involved in two critique groups.

And every week or two, I drove back to Indiana to take care of her expenses and in-home health care workers. I didn’t have enough brain power at the end of the day to think about cold querying agents. The Twitter pitch party seemed like a good plan for me to move forward. I could get my story seen by dozens of agents at once.

So between trips to Indiana, I diligently wrote and rewrote a log line for my manuscript eight different ways. The manuscript was called FRACTURED GIRL. I posted the pitch with the hashtag as many times as I could. And then I forgot about it.

Two weeks later, I checked my twitter account and was surprised to find an agent request for FRACTURED GIRL. So I sent it and didn’t think twice.

My mom’s doctors at National Jewish Pulmonary Hospital had tried numerous experimental treatments before giving up. For 10 years she had a micro-bacterial infection filling her lungs with disease and fluid. She was not a candidate for surgery. She passed away in late October of that year.

There are no accidents.

Three days later, Jenny Chen called from Crooked Lane Books.

I remember taking the call so vividly, but can’t remember a thing that I said. We chatted about the story. She asked about my plans for future books. She asked about marketing. We talked for about an hour.

When I hung up I was baffled. I couldn’t process what she’d said. I went upstairs where my husband was waiting on pins and needles. He asked how it went and I said, “I don’t know. She wants to send me a contract.”

When he burst into tears, it finally hit me what happened. I had a book contract, and FRACTURED GIRL was going to be in bookstores.

I never happens the way you want it to. That’s what they tell you in writing conferences. Believe it. It happens because you’re persistent and you don’t quit in the face of adversity.

Best Kept Secrets was released in October of 2019. In November, the CLB publicist assigned to it moved on. And in March of 2020, my editor left CLB. Then bookstores closed.

Five years have passed since that pub day. Since then, I’ve been writing and publishing Romantic thrillers under a pseudonym. But that’s not my true passion.

Even though publishing my debut was fraught with angst and personal turmoil—or maybe because of it—I love psychological thrillers and paranormal thrillers. I believe my mom had a hand in getting my book published. She and I have talked since her death. I see her and know she’s here, working behind the scenes.

Best Kept Secrets will be in the Blackbird Writers’ Halloween Flash sale on October 26th and 27th. Go to the website on 10/26 for more info.

I hope you’ll look for my paranormal thriller, FOREWARNED in 2025.