On Endings and Beginnings

To put it delicately, I lost my ever loving mind when the cherry blossoms bloomed in the early spring in the Seattle area. We had survived our first Washington winter and days were beginning to get longer. The sun was out and life felt magical. In Los Angeles, spring and summer was marked by jacarandas flowering, which smelled awful and left our cars covered in pollen. Cherry blossoms were an exquisite novelty, but short lived. Almost as soon as they blossomed, they were gone again.

One of the motifs of The Blood Pack Books is how life can have sharp lines demarcating a transformative experience. There is a before and an after. For some of the characters, this is the Reveal of magic that causes a dramatic life change. For others, it's the death of a loved one or a traumatic event. For almost all of the characters I write, there is this defining event in their past.

I think we all categorize our lives by endings and beginnings. We celebrate the start of a marriage with a wedding. We mourn the passing of loved ones with a funeral. I'm influenced greatly by my own experiences and defining moments in my writing. As a millennial, I remember the terrorist attacks on 9/11 happening on the news as an adolescent. My young adulthood was influenced by Obama's presidency and the Great Recession. I remember where I was the morning after the election results were called for both Trump presidencies. After each historical event (and don't I feel ancient saying that), it truly did feel like life would never be the same and in some ways, that held true.

In my own life events, I see the transition of my careers, my wedding, and the purchase of our first home as lines etched into my memory. Each event created its own distinct chapter in my life. And some lines created an entirely new story, a separate book beginning with no end in sight. I have been transformed completely by chronic illness. I am a different person than who I would have been if I hadn't been sick. I remember the who I was before and the who I became after.

I think its normal for there to be grief associated with each closing, even if there is excitement for the new beginning. I still grieve the woman I could have been without chronic illness even though I know the woman I am today wouldn't exist without it.

I am coming up on the closing of a couple chapters. It is my one-year anniversary of moving to Washington state in mid-October. It was a move that we were excited to undertake, but one that we may have underestimated. For much of the year, we were in survival mode. We were getting adjusted to a new state, to a temporary 500 sq ft apartment, and to new weather patterns. Now that we are getting settled in our new home, the closing of this year grants us the freedom to truly start our life here. The move no longer feels temporary or transitional. We are here to stay and can start putting down our roots.

The next closing is the release of Moon Dance. It will be out into the universe on Halloween. It is over a year and a half's worth of work and it frankly feels a little surreal that it will be complete. Even as I fine tune the last edits, it hasn't quite set in that I can stop working on it. It's bittersweet because I really love the characters and the world I have built. I can't wait to continue their stories in future novels. But I also need to move on to new projects and ideas. While I am proud of my debut, it is only the beginning.

Moon Dance is available for pre-order here.

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