March 1, 2021
No Regrets Post One
Week 9, Day 1 – No Regrets
Genre: New Adult Contemporary Romance
Original Release Date: September 29, 2015
Second Release Date: July 19, 2019
Original Cover Design: Lyrical Press
New Cover Design: Kate L. Mary
Formats: ebook, audiobook, and paperback – grab the ebook for just $0.99 for a limited time!
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Universal
Audible
Goodreads
UK Audiobook Listeners Can Grab A Code for a FREE Audiobook HERE!
College is supposed to be fun.
Go to parties.
Pick up guys.
Maybe get in a little trouble.
On the surface Cami is your average, wild teenager out to have a good time, but inside she’s struggling. Almost a year ago her best friend was in a car accident, an accident Cami feels responsible for. Since then, she’s made it her personal mission to experience everything life has to offer, both for herself and for Julie, who will never have fun again.
Then she meets Liam, her cousin’s sexy roommate. Hooking up with a hot British dude seems like the perfect way to start off the school year, but the more time she spends with him, the more she finds herself actually liking the guy. Which totally screws up her plans to live life with no regrets…
What can you tell us about the writing of No Regrets?
The posts for this book might be short because they’re pretty similar to my experience with The List since they’re part of the same series and with the same publisher, but here goes anyway.
If you read my posts about The List, you know I got a three book deal with Kensington Press for my College of Charleston series, which was a pretty big deal for me. When I signed the contract, only the first book in the series was written, so No Regrets was the first book I wrote on a deadline, and I was surprised by how much it affected my productivity. (Another reason I prefer self-publishing.) The deadline was mostly self imposed because when I signed with Kensington I was asked how long it would take me to write the next book and, since I write fast, I told them four months, which seemed like a pretty good guess considering I can easily finish the first draft of a book in a month when motivated. What I didn’t factor in, however, was how the pressure of that deadline looming over me would get in my head, especially when I reached plot point that was giving me trouble. Often this happens when I’m working on a novel, and instead of staring at a computer screen for days and making little to no progress, I typically put the WIP aside and move on to something else to give my brain a rest. More often than not, the next time I open that manuscript, the problems work themselves out organically because I’m looking at it from a fresh perspective. I didn’t feel like I could do that with No Regrets, so I powered through, and what I eventually turned in to my editor was not great. I knew it, but I hoped feedback from her would help me work out the issues.
A few weeks passed and having taken a step back, I felt like I give it another shot and polish the story even more, so I emailed her. Thankfully, she hadn’t gotten to it yet, and I was able to do another few read throughs, add to the story, and polish the plot points I’d struggled with, eventually turning in a much better draft. The funny thing is, that because of this struggle and because I turned in a very, very bad first draft, I had this aversion to this book for the next few years. I never told anyone that, of course, because I wanted people to buy it, but I always thought of it as not good. Years later when I got my rights back, I determined to fix it, but when I finally sat down and read it again, I found that I actually liked the story! The idea that it wasn’t a good book was all in my head because I had such a bad first experience writing under a deadline. It was a nice surprise, especially because it needed little revision before I republished it.
