One
of the things I love about reading a book series is to find out what
characters from the older books are up to. Whether a series by a single
author or a multi-author series, I have to read every book.
My first
book with The Wild Rose Press was the first in a series that took place
in a sports bar in a fictional college town on the shore of Nahant Bay,
just north of Boston. After that book, Mike’s Best Bet, came out in
2010 I had a lot of questions about other characters in “Mike,” some of
which were answered in the next two books, What Ian Wants (also 2010)
and Charming Dave (2012).
But most people wanted to know if a pair
of teenagers in the book, Jeff and Beth, would get a HEA. Of course they
would! I didn’t plan on writing Jeff and Beth’s book so soon. I wanted
them to grow up a little bit.
The universe didn’t care about what I
wanted. The Wild Rose Press put out a call for books in a multiple
author series set in the fictional town of Lobster Cove, Maine. It
turned out that Jeff and Beth’s story was a perfect fit for Lobster
Cove.
See, in Mike’s Best Bet, at the ages of 18 and 16, Jeff got
Beth pregnant. Her father went totally ballistic and wanted to have Jeff
arrested, so the two teens eloped to Maine, in the middle of a
blizzard. The kids got caught and were dragged back to Nahant Bay.
Beth’s father packed up his family and Jeff never saw hide or hair of
them.
The two spent so many years apart, longing for each other.
Eventually, they tried to get on with their lives, but no one brought
them the true joy they’d felt that one night in Lobster Cove.
So seeing all the wonderful possibilities of colliding Lobster Cove with Nahant
Bay,
I waved my magic wand and SORASed, a.k.a. Soap Opera Rapid Aging
Syndrome, and wrote Jeff and Beth’s story set in Lobster Cove ten years
after Mike’s Best Bet, had taken place.
The whole time I wrote about
Jeff and Beth and Lobster Cove I thought I was writing a secret baby
story, the kind of plot with which I’ve long lost patience. However, as
the story progressed, I realized I was writing a reunion book, telling
about two high school sweethearts finding each other. First love became
forever love.
So please enjoy your visit to Lobster Cove and then
take a walk in the past, in Addington, Massachusetts on Nahant Bay, just
north of Boston, where Beth and Jeff got their start in Mike’s Best
Bet, What Ian Wants, Charming Dave. Don’t forget to keep a weather eye
out for A Taste of Hope, the fourth in the Addington books, coming up
soon from The Wild Rose Press!
Doreen Alsen
doreenalsen.com
LOL - Soap Opera Rapid Aging Sydrome. Love it! Looking forward to reading this. Thanks for the behind-the-scenes peek.
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