COMFORT ZONES & SECRETS

Are you a creature of habit, like me? Someone who sinks into their comfort zone, and unless given a swift kick in the patoot, will happily sit there and wallow for a while?

I admit it, I’m a creature of habit. Especially when I’m busy (and let’s face it – as a full-time working mom with a side hustle who decided 2020 was the perfect time to go to grad school –I’ve been stupidly busy for the past eighteen months).

At the end of 2020 (pausing for the boos and hisses that will inevitably come with mentioning the past year) I slid right into my comfortable little bubble while working hard to finish a novel in my Sapphire Creek series while balancing classes. It was then that my seventeen-year-old son gave me the swift kick out of that comfort zone. He approached me one evening with his phone in hand and announced, “You have a problem.”

That problem? Spotify was listing me as the top 1% Jonas Brothers listener.

I still don’t completely believe their analytics because the kid and I shared a Spotify account. (Then. We don’t share any more. LOL) The little bit I got to use it didn’t equate to what I would have imagined a top 1% listener would get to. But it did.

I’d started listening to Jonas Brothers after watching their documentary on Amazon Prime, which showed their concert tour. (I watched Carrie Underwood’s Storyteller concert, too). See, I was doing research for Coming Home, which features Erin Chase, who you meet in Coming In Hot (book 1 of my Sapphire Creek Series). I became fascinated by the first JoBro (as we superfans call them *hairflip*) documentary which spoke directly to the brother’s raise to fame and how they fell apart as a musical group. The personal dynamics, jealousy, ego and love pushed and pulled these young men who’d been on the fringes of my reality (my kids are just young enough that they were still watching the Wiggles when the Jonas Brothers were on Camp Rock or the other Disney show they did). I knew who they were (of course) but had zero contact with them.

One of the best compliments I receive about my Sapphire Creek crew is when people tell me they wish they were friends with them. They want to be sitting in the Bitterroot Tavern and have a drink and several laughs with this group of friends who have been there for each other through thick and thin—even when some of them have moved away to try to start life elsewhere. They want the best for one another and accept their friends for the people they are—even while challenging them to be the best version of themselves possible.

That’s the focus of Coming Around, the novella featured in the upcoming anthology Finally Got It Right. Teen parents rarely have the full support of both families—let alone their entire hometown—while they carve out a life for themselves. But Connor and Bethany are blessed in having the full Sapphire Creek crew backing them up. I loved pushing them both out of their comfort zones while they both fought to keep their surprises form one another.

Don’t we all deserve that?

One commenter will win a copy of both Coming in Hot and Coming Home (along with a few other goodies!)

Finally Got It Right will release February 8, 2022 and is available for pre-order now.