Tequila High- the real story

If you follow me, you may know some of what I’m about to share.  I’m not going to tell you the description of the story or post teasers or try to sell you a book. I’m a terrible salesperson.  That’s the one aspect of this job that I truly do NOT like.  But that’s not what I’m doing here anyway. Today, I want to tell you why I love this book, why it’s important, and why it released today.

November 18.  My father’s birthday.  He would’ve been 81 years old today.  As many of you know, he passed away in December of 2015.  I was devastated, as most would expect.  I thought I grieved like everyone else, but what I didn’t think was that his death would so utterly change my life. I mean, I knew it would be different, that there would be an empty place in my heart for the rest of my days, but I didn’t expect for it to touch and disrupt every single area of my existence the way it did.  

It started with my first book after he died. It was called The Empty Jar. It was cathartic in ways I’m still coming to understand.  I thought that would be it, that would be all I needed to move forward.  I thought wrong.  That book marked the time when I would, for a while, be unable to write romance at all.  So I wrote several suspense type books instead, and another heartbreaking one, and then late in 2016 I returned to romance with Levi’s Blue. At that point, I thought that book was it. I thought I was fixed again.

Again, I was wrong. 

God had other plans.

Over the course of 2017, I would lose my ability to finish a book.  I tweaked and polished a book I’d previously started, called The Beautiful Now, and I’d go on in 2018 to polish a suspense book I’d previously written called The Way We Burn.  Over the fourteen months between August of 17 and October 18, I would start and stop almost two dozen books.  In the 8 years that I’ve been writing, I’ve never experienced writer’s block.

Now, I have.

Y’all, I was terrified. I was discouraged.  I was depressed.  I was ashamed.  I ran the gamut of emotions. I’d be elated when I started a new book, thinking it would be THE one, only to find that words just dry up somewhere between 10 and 20 thousand words, and I would come crashing down.  In the summer of 18, I would get 30 thousand into one book, only to have my computer crash and lose it.  It was like God was pushing me away from what I’ve thought for years was my calling.

And I believe He was.

I believe that over the course of the last nearly 3 years, God has torn me down to the studs and rebuilt me from the ground up. He has tested my faith, my trust, my commitment, my resolve, and my limits. He has tweaked everything from the way I spend my mornings and my nights, to the things I eat and how I treat my body. He has introduced me to some wonderful people and reminded me why, ultimately, He gave me this dream job.  He has tried me on every front. Or at least it feels that way.  There were several points along the way when I really began to wonder if my life would ever be the same again. Or even something I could call “normal” again.

And then…

Then in late September of this year, I sat down to write a new story that had caught my creative attention. It was the push and pull of the characters that really intrigued me. A girl resistant to someone she was attracted to, and a guy too stubborn to let her resist for long.  I loved their struggle, so I wrote. And I prayed. And I wrote some more. And I prayed some more.  That book was called Tequila High.

I didn’t announce the release until I was close enough to being finished that I knew I would make it. That’s why it has been a short, rushed release period.  It isn’t the longest book I’ve ever written either, but you know what? I finished it. I started it and I finished it, and now it’s out in the world. One of my most significant book birthdays in my career.  It is also one of my favorites for all of the reasons above.  It marks the day that I feel like I came full circle. I’m not at all the person I was when all this started on December 4, 2015. I miss my dad more than I could explain, but I know he would be so pleased to know that losing him could be the catalyst to turn me into who I’ve become.  Y’all might not see the difference, but it’s there. It’s there in every cell, every fiber of my being. I’m different. I know things about myself, about life, about God that I never would’ve known otherwise. For that alone, I can’t regret a single moment of the struggle.  It’s worth it. To be here, knowing love and grief and healing and true faith like I know it now…  It was all worth it.  

To y’all, this book is another release from an author you know.  I hope it’ll be a book you love, filled with characters that stick with you for a while.  But for me?  This is full circle. This is the birth of someone new, appropriately on the day my father was born so many years ago. I shared so much with him in life, it only seems fitting that this book would release on his day.  I didn’t plan it out; it just happened. But once I saw the date on the calendar, I knew it was purposeful. Not by MY design, though.  This has God written all over it.  I feel it all the way down in my soul.  

So, that’s the real story of Tequila High. Whatever happens with it, I will smile every time I read that title, see that cover, think of those characters.  Today is day one. All over again. And this time, it’s going to be even better!  

Happy Sunday, happy reading, and happy birthday to my wonderful father who is in heaven with my other Wonderful Father.  It’s a beautiful day!