Saturday, January 16, 2016

Pedal to the Metal



Today, January 16th, 2016, I'm so glad to announce that Pedal to the Metal L-I-V-E!
Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon AU | Amazon CA

Thank you for your patience.
Thank you for your impatience.
Both the messages of support and the toe-tapping side-eyes helped me push through this painful project.

Why painful?

I had to kick over a lot of rocks to write it. Most were long-buried and buried for a reason.
Every woman has those rocks. What we do with them varies, but we all carry the weight. We can't bury them outside of ourselves--not without a psychotic break. We can put them on our shoulders and play the victim. We can turn them into altars, and make the rock our reason to be. We can shove them in the corner and try not to stub our toe on them in the dark. We can stand on top of them and not let them sink us.

Those rocks are our earliest sexual experiences. The ill-chosen ones and the ones we didn't choose. The ones we pretend didn't happen. The ones that a thousand generous lovers cannot wipe from our minds.

We show them to our closest girlfriends in order to try and make sense of them. But, since they're rocks, they can become weapons used against us.

That's the mindset I've lived in for the last six months. In order to put the pain of growing up on the page, I had to re-live it. Seriously, I wouldn't be that age again for anything.

This series is not utterly erotica, it's damn sure not traditional romance. In fact, it is, was, and remains, erotic coming-of-age fiction. The problem with putting this story into a box labeled 'romance' is that leaves no room for the other people who touch, and shake, our girl Shelby.

Therefore, she  had to struggle with more than falling for just one man. She had to find her posse. Those ride-or-die girlfriends who get us all through our lives as women. She had to deal with the fallout of loving two or three, men and women, when society allows you but one. 'Tis a curse to feel everything so damn deep.

This version isn't what you'd have read if I'd released in September. It's not the version I had on paper in November, nor even the one I'd started to format for release at the end of December.

But, it's the story I wanted to write.