The Coda Series
Promises – Jared and Matt
A to Z – Zach and Angelo
The Promise – Jared and Matt
The Letter Z – Zach and Angelo
Strawberries for Dessert – Cole and Jonathan
Putting Out Fires – Jared and Matt
Paris A to Z – Zach and Angelo
Fear, Hope, and Bread Pudding – Cole and Jonathan
Shotgun – Dominic and Lamar
Meant to Be – The Coda Prequel
Has it really been ten years?
I frequently hear authors say, “I always wanted to be a writer.”
Well, I didn’t.
I was always an avid reader, but I had no intention of ever becoming an author. Sure, I knew how to write. The basic mechanics of it were easy for me. What I lacked (at least, in my estimation) was the imagination to really pull it off.
Fast-forward to December 2008, when I quit my job of eleven years at an OB-GYN clinic in order to be a stay-at-home mom. I only planned to be home a few years—just until my daughter started school full-time—before reentering the workforce.
About four months into my new life, I woke up with an idea in my head. I sat down at my computer and I started writing. I felt like a fraud. What the hell did I know about writing a book? I hadn’t even started the story at the beginning! I’d jumped right into the middle, which seemed absurd, even to me.
But I kept going.
I wrote like a fiend, hiding it from my husband the entire time. I was so secretive, he eventually asked if I was having an affair. (He was quite relieved to find out the affair was with two imaginary men.) I wrote and wrote and wrote. Eventually, that story turned into Promises. The first publisher I sent it to rejected it (thank goodness, because they went out of business not long after), but the second accepted it.
And suddenly—almost accidentally—I was an author. A very clueless, lost, naïve author, but an author nonetheless.
Here I am now, ten years later, reediting Promises for its mass market release. And wow. A lot has changed in those ten short years.
When I wrote Promises, only about half the people I knew had cell phones, and none of them owned a smartphone. Even the doctors I worked for didn’t use them. They still relied on pagers. (Yeah. Pagers.) Only ten years ago, landlines were the norm, handheld GPS devices were revolutionary, Al Davis was still alive, and the opioid epidemic in America hadn’t yet been realized. So when it came time to re-edit Promises, we had to decide how many of those dated references to leave and how many to change.
Well, I changed the bit about Al Davis, because what was funny when he was still alive felt callous now that he’s passed. But the rest we chose to leave—landlines, Vicodin, and all.
As for me, I think I’ve changed more than anything. I’ve published thirty-odd stories since Promises and seen my books translated into seven languages. I’ve laughed. I’ve cried. I’ve learned to say, “I’m a romance novelist” when people ask what I do, without needing to somehow qualify it or defend it. I’ve made friends. I’ve lost friends. I’ve cried some more. I’ve grown as both a person and an author. And I’ve learned what it means when somebody offers heartfelt, unwavering support.
In the first version of Promises, I thanked Carol Ibanez and Amy Caroline. They still deserve my gratitude because without them, this story would never have been published. But ten years later, I’d like to take a minute or two to thank the people who have stuck with me since day one:
Wendy Russo: Wendy and I have known each other since second grade. We often joke that we share a brain (but I got the naughty part). She’s listened to me whine, bitch, bellyache, and celebrate. She’s read nearly every single book in its infancy and offered me invaluable advice along the way. If you’ve developed a fondness for Arbor Mist since reading Strawberries for Dessert, you have Wendy to thank.
Ethan Stone: I met Ethan in early 2009 when I saw his reading list on PaperbackSwap.com and realized we were both hunting for gay romance. I contacted him out of the blue and asked if he’d like to start swapping books. From there, we became good friends. Since then, we’ve both published books and we’ve learned a lot together. He’s also listened to me whine, bitch, bellyache, and celebrate. (I tend to do those first three things too often, and the last one not nearly enough.)
My mother-in-law Judy: Judy’s a lifelong Republican who has proven to me that open-mindedness lives on both sides of the aisle. She reads every single book I write and keeps asking for more.
My husband Sean: When Dreamspinner Press sent me that very first contract, my trusting husband said to me, “Forget going back to work. Just keep doing this.” All that whining, bitching, and bellyaching I mentioned before? Well, he’s taken the lion’s share of it, and he’s never once complained. (Not to me, at any rate.)
Most importantly, I’d like to thank my readers. Many of you have followed me from the bright optimism of Coda to the dark, troubled streets of Davlova and beyond. A few of you, I’ve met. Some of you, I know by name. Many more of you are still strangers to me. Yet you’ve joined me on these journeys over and over again. Not only that, you’ve shared parts of yourselves with me. Over the years, I’ve received letters that have truly touched me. I’ve had women tell me they changed their mind on gay marriage because they stumbled across one of my books. I’ve had men tell me my books gave them the courage to come out, the strength to keep going, and the hope that they too can find a happily ever after. I’ve had readers thank me for tackling religion without bashing it in Between Sinners and Saints. I’ve heard from countless children of alcoholics who were reassured by Family Man that they weren’t monsters for sometimes hating their own parents. I will never forget one particular reader who told me he made it through a humiliating situation by channeling Cole, and that it was one of the most empowering moments of his life.
These are things authors live for. These are the reasons we live and die on the page.
So although I’ve thought about quitting this whole writing gig more times than I can count, it’s the readers who always convince me to stop whining, bitching, and bellyaching. It’s the readers who remind me to celebrate. It’s you, dear readers, who make me think that maybe—just maybe—it’s all worth it.
None of this would be possible without you.
Thank you.
Chapter 1
The whole thing started because of Lizzy’s Jeep. If it hadn’t been for that, I might not have met Matt. And maybe he wouldn’t have felt the need to prove himself. And maybe nobody would have been hurt.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Like I said, it started with Lizzy’s Jeep. Lizzy is the wife of my brother Brian, and they were expecting their first child in the fall. She decided her old Wrangler, which she’d had since college, wasn’t going to cut it as a family vehicle. So she parked it out front of our shop with a handwritten For Sale sign in the window.
“The shop” had come to us via my grandfather. Originally, it’d been a hardware store. At some point, auto parts had been added as well. When my grandpa died, my dad took over the store, and when he died, it passed to Brian, Lizzy, and me. Normally, I didn’t mind tending the place, but it was a gorgeous spring day in Colorado, and at that moment, I would have rather been outside, enjoying the sunshine. Instead, I was sitting with my feet on the counter, dreaming of what might have been.