Today Don’t Lose Hope, the third book in my series, Tucson Is Where the Heart Is, comes out!
I’m so excited and can’t wait for everyone to read about Hope finding her soul mate.
Don’t Lose Hope is available for purchase in ebook and paperback on Amazon here.
Just like I’ve done with the two other books in the series, Follow Your Bliss and Attract Good Karma, I’m going to share some fun facts about Don’t Lose Hope.
Fun Fact #1
I used a sensitivity reader for the first time with this book. Hope, the heroine, is disabled and uses a wheelchair to get around. I’ve never had any experience with disability or being in a wheelchair, so I made sure someone who does know what it’s like to live life differently abled read through my manuscript to make sure I was accurately portraying Hope’s experience. I was quite relieved to get a positive response from my sensitivity reader, and she added a bunch of great suggestions that I incorporated.
Fun Fact #2
I struggled to come up with the title for Don’t Lose Hope. The first two titles of the series came easily, but this one was hard. I brainstormed ideas that had Joy and Grace in the title, and then Hope just popped into my head one day when I was close to thinking Tucson Is Where the Heart Is might just be a two book series.
Fun Fact #3
Don’t Lose Hope went through a total rewrite after I gave it to my developmental editor. She loved Follow Your Bliss and Attract Good Karma, and I figured she’d love the third book, too. So I was shocked when she sent me her notes and said the plot felt half-baked and the characters were under-developed. After sulking a little bit and thinking how wrong she was, I realized she was right and did a complete overhaul in two weeks. She liked my new version much better, and so did I.
Fun Fact #4
This book is dedicated to my good friend, Lilli. From the moment we met on the first day of a job that turned out to be awful, we were fast friends and one of the things we bonded over was our love of writing and wanting to be published one day. She always encouraged me to self-publish and if it hadn’t been for her support and confidence in me, I probably wouldn’t have felt brave enough to put my work out into the world.
Fun Fact #5
When my proofreader was going through Don’t Lose Hope, she thought the Purple Orchid (a made-up hotel featured in the book), was real, and went to Google it so she could recommend it to a friend who was planning to go to Tucson soon. I could not stop laughing when I read that in the notes!