Today is an exciting day, as it brings me one step further on a path I’ve been traveling for what feels like a lifetime.

It seems like a lifetime ago that I embarked on the endeavor of publishing my first novel. The Goblin Market was a project I’d been working on for years, writing and rewriting it the entire time I was going to college, but never quite knowing what to do with it whenever I reached a point where it felt done. Then I met my husband, who at the time was podcasting his zombie novel ESCAPE. He convinced me to podcast The Goblin Market, and I set up a website, bought a cheap microphone and downloaded freeware recording software to embark on the rewarding, but complicated endeavor that is podcasting a novel. It felt like it took forever to record, edit and put episodes out into the world, but I did it and then I began the process of independently publishing the book itself. The podcast is no longer available, but there is now a professionally recorded audiobook, a paperback and an ebook version of The Goblin Market, which is still very exciting to me. The love of your first “real” novel never dies.

At the time I was very motivated. I knew right where the next story was going to go, and I’d even started writing it, but as things happen from time to time I lost momentum and my inspiration began to wane. Jack in the Green, the follow-up novel to The Goblin Market got put on the backburner so many times, I lost faith in the story itself and thought maybe I should shy away from the pleas for a continuation of the story and move on to other things. I couldn’t ignore the pleas anymore than I could ignore the story itself, and for years I poked at it, prodding and trying to breathe life back into it so I could move on with my life.

See, I’m one of those people that cannot abide unfinished business. I don’t like to break promises and I lose sleep over things that need to be taken care of. That’s not to say I haven’t had my fair share of good nights’ sleep over the last five years, but there have been times it’s really bothered me that I hadn’t been able to finish Jack in the Green yet. I wrote a lot of other things in the interim. Several other novels, tons of short stories and then I sat down one day and wrote Winterborn–a short novelette meant to bridge the gap between The Goblin Market and Jack in the Green. Maybe it would quiet the disturbance and get me back on track with the novel that needed to be written. For a while it did just that and diligently worked through the 65,000 words I’d already written on the manuscript that seriously didn’t seem to want to be written.

A character emerged during the reworking, an embittered young prince who needed further exploration, and several times over the last year I found myself tinkering with his story as he folded himself into Jack’s. I spent most of May working on Jack in the Green because that story finally decided it was time. And then near the end of the month I sat down and started writing a novella about that angry little princeling. With the story now finished and in edits and rewrites, it’s time to advance one step further Into the Green.

Coming July 10, 2015, pre-order details to follow shortly. In the meantime, if you’d like to begin your journey Into the Green, you can begin at The Goblin Market and follow it up with Winterborn before embarking ever further into the darkness that lurks between the Underground kingdoms with The Darkling Prince. If you’re already familiar with this world, you can learn more about the story itself over on my website in the Cover Reveal post there.