A New Novel from Me


          So, I belong to this writing group called the Orange County Fictionaires that's been meeting since 1966. No, I wasn't there at the time: I only joined in the year 2000.

          A lot of writers living south of Los Angeles have been or currently are members: T. Jefferson Parker, Elizabeth George, Debra Holland, Neal Shusterman, Kristy Tate, Jackie Diamond, all kinds of folks writing all kinds of stuff. And some of them last year started talking about how people over the age of 50 might be interested in reading romance novels involving characters who are of a similar age.

          Talk, as it often does among writers, led to action, and they were soon asking if anyone else in the group wanted to join them in writing a series of books they were calling Better Late Romances.

          They'd already established a few ground rules: no sex scenes, for instance, and nothing could happen that was too far outside the "real world." The books would all be set in the same fictional southern California coastal community, and they would all have something to do with an earthquake that hits the town just after 2PM on a Friday in the middle of March.

          I said, "Sure! Sign me up!"

          I mean, yes, I've never been personally involved in a romance, but I'd written a few love stories over on the My Little Pony fanfiction site that had been well received. And yes, I'd never written anything that didn't feature talking animals in one way or another, but human are just talking animals when you get right down to it, right?

          Six of us ended up seeing the process through to the end, and you can check out the results on the Better Late Romance website. Mine's called Little Star, and the Kindle version's now available. You can even take the link in the previous sentence and use the "Look Inside" feature to read the book's first chapter and a bit of the second absolutely free if you're interested. The actual printed-on-paper edition should be ready in the next couple days, too, for those who enjoy that sort of thing.

          Much thanks to Marilyn Scott-Waters and Tom Payne for their work getting the various cover images together!

Comments

  1. BetsyDJuly 12, 2021 at 5:58 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. MHPayneJuly 13, 2021 at 8:56 AM

      And yet?

      I shall reply to it with the following cryptic string: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08NMKDXQG/

      Delete

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