January 4, 2021
Collision Post One
Happy New Year!
I’m starting a new thing for 2021, which is a revisit of the books I’ve written in the order they were published, complete with insider info on what inspired me, any interesting tidbits about the characters or settings, and lots of other cool details about me and my work. Each week I’ll not only feature a new book, but I’ll also drop the price for that week, giving readers a chance to take advantage of a really great deal. Plus, I’m doing a giveaway for a signed paperback! I only have 45 books at the moment, and since there are 52 weeks in a year, that means my goal for 2021 is to put out 7 more books and/or novellas so I can fill every week with awesome tidbits! It’s a lofty goal, but I’m determined to have a more productive year than I did in 2020.
Let’s get started!
Week 1, Day 1 – Collision
Genre: New Adult Mystery/Romance
Release Date: April 28, 2014 AND June 10, 2014
Cover Design: Etopia Press AND Kate L. Mary
Formats: ebook, audiobook, and paperback
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Amazon Universal
Audible
Goodreads
UK Audiobook Listeners: Grab a code for a FREE audiobook of Collision
Some secrets are better left untold…
When eighteen-year-old Kara Jones gets into a car accident on the way home from college, she’s left with more than a few bruised ribs, a busted cell phone, and a totaled car. After a slip-up at the hospital, she’s shaken to discover that her family isn’t all it seems. And now her mother’s strange behavior and willingness to do anything to protect her secrets—including pulling Kara out of school—have Kara floundering in the dark.
Enter Derek Miller, a former classmate who’s dealing with family issues of his own. His nerdy charm is too much for Kara to resist, and she’s even more amazed when he agrees to help her dig into her mother’s past. Together they investigate her mother’s old friends and boyfriends, hoping to discover who Kara really is. Instead, they find disturbing connections to the dark history of Kent State University, and an ever expanding maze of mystery surrounding Kara’s birth.
As Kara and Derek chase secrets, she realizes he’s the only person she can trust. But as they get closer to the truth, the disturbing answers reveal a web of evil far darker and further reaching than they’d imagined, leaving Kara to wish she’d never asked the questions in the first place.
When did you write Collision?
Collision was not the first book I wrote, but it was the first one published. It’s difficult to remember all the dates and details more than six years later, but thankfully my Facebook pictures AND my YahooMail folder full of books were able to give me a little more insight into how it all went down. So, here we go.
As far as I can tell, Collision was book number seven for me. Actually, it was a little more than that, because the first two and a quarter books I ever wrote ARE STILL NOT published. Crazy, right? See, I started out by writing a dystopian series that was sooo heavily inspired by The Hunger Games that I’ve never been able to revise and publish it. Seriously, I’ve tried. I have two and a quarter books in a three book series already written – and some really awesome characters – but it needs so much work that every time I open it and think “this is it” I find myself wanting to scream. It has the potential, but it’s a mess. Maybe 2021 will be the year I fix this series, but I doubt it. Anyway, after writing that series, I wrote The Book of David, which I finally released in 2019, and then the first three books in the Broken World series: Broken World, Mad World, and Shattered World. Collision came next.
I wrote this book sometime in 2013 – the earliest email I can find about it was in July, so I’m assuming I started in the spring – while I was living in California. I was actively looking for an agent at the time – submitting the horrible dystopian novel that I still haven’t published AND The Book of David – and planning to self-publish the Broken World books when I paused to write this one, and even though it isn’t the genre I loved, I do adore this story.
