Wrapping Up 2020

Have you ever found money stashed in a purse you haven’t used in a while or found an item you stashed away for safe keeping and forgot about? Those little discoveries are like finding buried treasure or winning a mini lottery. Something similar happened to me in 2020.

After publishing Maybe Someday, the third book in the Whiskey Valley Romance series, I wasn’t sure what to write next. I started on book four in the series, as well as the second book I hope to publish in 2021, but couldn’t stay focused on either book. I needed inspiration, so I went searching for it in my basement. I shuffled cardboard boxes and plastic totes until I found the clear tote with the white lid that stored notebooks filled with story ideas, manuscripts (unfinished and finished), reject letters from traditional publishers, and several stories from high school and college I should probably throw in the recycle bin. Basically, my “writing tub” contained a lifetime of writing: good stuff, bad stuff, and what-was-I-thinking stuff.

I dug around until I found the purple folder I’d been searching for that held a completed manuscript written 20 years ago. I thumbed through it, liking what I read. The downside to finding this “buried gem” was that I didn’t have an electronic file and would have to retype it into a Word file; the upside was that it only needed minor revisions. So I typed and revised, changing the title and several character names as well as making the story more modern. In the original manuscript, only one character had a cell phone (a flip phone) and one character actually used a phone booth. My, how times have changed.

So after revising, proofing, and having a sexy little cover made, the new and improved Wrapped Up in You was finished. I’m happy I rediscovered this story and could share a second book with you all in 2020. I hope you enjoyed the romance, suspense and antics of the merry matchmakers in my “buried gem.”