“It’s simply an accident of birth that I’m not even more important.”- Hyacinth Bucket [Keeping Up Appearances] 

This snowy Monday morning, I’m thinking about the accident of birth. About taking chances, even so. Keep going when the chips are down, that kind of thing.

For no reason at all.

This week, with the release of Flame For Keeps, I’m doing something I never thought I’d do.

At one point, I never thought this book would get into the hands of readers and I might have screamed into the void.

When expectations don’t meet reality, it can take a bit to get over it and get on with it and with the release of Flame For Foe, that’s what happened. Readers had asked me for a book about Quinn’s little sister ever since she first appeared in Flame For Two. So I expected the release to go well.

It didn’t.

I got my first ever hate mail about a fictional character. A neurodiverse character, who acted like a neurodiverse human didn’t find the warm reception I thought she would. But I love that book and the readers who love Flame For Foe love it and I write for readers who want my books about power exchange relationships with messy characters and spicy times (my unofficial tagline).

But Flame For Keeps was drafted. If readers didn’t like Flame For Foe…how were they going to react to a book with a disabled FMC? I didn’t have my armor patched up well enough to find out and I needed a break from from the Bandit Brothers world, so I paused all projects though I did go back in and lightly edit a few books and I think there was a cover change in there…

So I launched a pen name and released three books before I went back to the Bandit Brothers world. Because Ares deserves a HEA and Josie has been one of those side characters ever since the series started and their story wouldn’t leave me alone.

“Change her…so she doesn’t have a disability.” went through my mind but I couldn’t. Didn’t want to.

Throughout those cameo appearance Josie shows up with mobility aids…except for in Flame For Foe and she as an internal as to why that is…so to change her from being a disabled character to not just because I was a scaredy cat over it? I couldn’t do it.

Besides, there’s a part of me that needs this character with her disability to be in this series and I kind of love her.

But I never thought I would write a character that shares things in common with myself, in this way.

For over a decade I have written about disability and kink in other places before becoming a romance writer, but this felt too raw, too personal. In writing Josie, I had to separate fact from fiction My own lived experiences from my character’s and in doing so, brought me to confront how inexplicably background, socioeconomic status, molds one’s experience of being disabled.

This might be the book that caused the most self-reflection yet and it was hard to write through it at times.

But Josie gets her HEA, the Bandit Brothers Series has another book and I’m going to keep on writing, despite everything. Many thanks to the readers who have waited for this book and have kept me writing.