Tag: writing

Why My Books Are Only On Amazon

Posted on by karennacolcroft

(I also posted this on Facebook over the weekend, so if you follow me there, you’ll have already read most of this. However, I did expand on what I’m currently planning as far as non-Amazon distribution of my books.)

I got an email the other day from a reader who wanted to know if there was a way to get my books without buying from Amazon.

I really appreciated them emailing me! I love hearing from readers, and this gives me a direction to go for the future.

However, as I told this reader, at the moment the answer is no. There is no other way to get my books other than buying from Amazon.

I know there are some readers who don’t want to buy from the giant conglomerate that’s trying to take over the universe, and I completely respect that choice. I also know there are some readers who will *only* go to Amazon; in some cases it’s because they can’t afford to buy all the books they want, so they have a Kindle Unlimited subscription that allows them to read as much as they like.

Books enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited program must be Amazon-exclusive; I’ve seen some authors who have gotten booted from KU because their books were pirated, and Amazon deemed that a violation of the exclusivity requirement.

As a side note: If you take an author’s book and toss it up on a “torrents” site or free download site or whatever, that is piracy. If you are committing book piracy, you are STEALING. Don’t be a dick; don’t steal authors’ work.

When I started self-publishing last year, I chose to put my books in Kindle Unlimited because I am one of those people who can’t afford to buy as many books as I would like, and I wanted my books to be available to people with a KU subscription. Also, we do get paid very minimal royalties based on pages read through Kindle Unlimited, and I hoped that would be a way to boost my earnings. And Amazon’s publishing platform is pretty easy for someone like me, who gets bogged down with technology and too many instructions, to use. Amazon also enables authors to at least try to protect their books against being pirated.

(The tendency for people to pirate books is another reason mine are not available through any other sources–including me giving them away; I used to give my books during release parties and such, but two got pirated before the release day even ended, so I said F it, if people are going to steal my shit, I’m going to stop giving them the opportunity.)

Things have changed in the past year and a half. Amazon has cut the amount authors earn for page reads through Kindle Unlimited, and more readers are refusing to spend their money with the universe-gobbling conglomerate. More authors I know are choosing to “go wide” with their books (i.e. have their books available through vendors other than or in addition to Amazon).

I am one of those authors. I am planning, beginning in 2024, to have my books available “wide.” But that’s going to take me some time.

I have to learn the other platforms. There are a few that allow authors to upload their books and distribute to multiple vendors; I will probably use one of those. I think I even have an account with one or two of them from when I self-published a couple of short stories a decade or so ago, so I just have to find the info again. But technology marches on, so I need to make sure I know what I’m doing with those platforms.

Which is another point: I have to find out what other platforms exist and which one(s) most authors in my genre (male/male romance) use and prefer. This involves some relatively easy research, but it’s still a thing I need to do.

I also have to go through my Amazon account and make sure my books *stop* being in Kindle Unlimited. When you enroll a book in KU, it’s a 90-day period that renews automatically unless you make sure it doesn’t. I have to make sure I uncheck the box (or whatever I need to do) so that the current books finish their enrollment and it *doesn’t* renew.

And I have to revamp my marketing strategy to accommodate marketing books that are available on sites other than/in addition to Amazon.

All of those things take time and mental bandwidth. I’m low on bandwidth much of the time; I have chronic health conditions that impact my ability to do the things. And some of my limited bandwidth is currently being occupied by a whole bunch of personal-life stuff that needs to be my priority right now.

I am going to be putting the time and bandwidth into making my books wide, but it’s going to be a little longer before I get there. In addition to the health and the other stuff I was already dealing with, I started a new job this past week that is VERY physically challenging for me and is wreaking havoc with the health. (I’m hoping it’s just a matter of needing another week or so to adjust; if not, I’m going to have to reconsider the job. But that’s a separate issue.)

So, for the time being, my books are Amazon-only. That includes Fill the Empty Spaces, which will be up for Kindle preorder on Sept. 28 and will release in Kindle and paperback formats on Oct. 12. I am sorry to those readers who won’t buy books from Amazon; I hope you’ll give me the grace and patience to stick around another few months until I am ready to go wide.

Currently, the plan is that Tempeh for Two (Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat 5) will be released in January 2024 as an Amazon exclusive for only the *first* 90-day enrollment period for Kindle Unlimited. Once that 90 days is up (mid-April), Tempeh and the other four RWDEM books will go wide. Stay tuned for info about which sites they’ll be available through. I have not yet decided whether the new books of the series, beginning with Take Some Tahini in July of 2024, will be enrolled in KU for the first 90 days or will just release wide right out of the gate, but I’ll keep readers informed when I decide.

For Chance Met and Fill the Empty Spaces, the current plan is to set those wide at the same time as the first five RWDEM books. I would *like* to make these two wide in mid-January 2024, after Fill the Empty Spaces completes its first 90-day enrollment period in Kindle Unlimited, but I’m not a hundred percent sure I’ll have everything in place by January, and I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep.

Beginning in March 2024, all future books that are *not* part of the Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat series, including books like Chance Met that have ties to the series but aren’t directly *in* the series, will be released wide from the beginning and will therefore not be available through Kindle Unlimited at all.

These plans, of course, are subject to change depending on what is happening in my non-writing life that takes up time and bandwidth, but currently this is what I intend to put into place.

Meanwhile, although I know some people prefer ebooks only and some of my readers are overseas, I do have paperbacks available. Amazon’s exclusivity requirement only applies to ebooks; paperbacks aren’t part of it. And all of my books are available in paperback because personally, I prefer having a hard-copy book that I can hold in my hands and flip the pages. So if you’d like paperback copies of any of my books and are willing to cover shipping costs as well as the cost of the book itself, feel free to message me!

Fill the Empty Spaces Cover!

Posted on by karennacolcroft

Now that I’ve done the cover reveal for my newsletter subscribers, I’m sharing the Fill the Empty Spaces cover here as well. (And if you want to subscribe to my newsletter so you get future exclusive content, you can go to my free short story page to sign up for the newsletter and get the link to download an exclusive Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat short story.)

The cat in the image is Charlie the Sweater Cat, who was a resident of the cat cafe where I volunteer. Charlie was found as a stray, with fur so matted he had to be shaved. He also had multiple health conditions that kept his fur from growing back properly. When a little girl visiting the cafe swaddled Charlie in a blanket, the cafe staff and volunteers realized Charlie felt comforted, so one of the volunteers started knitting sweaters for him to wear so he would always be warm and feel safe.

In the story, Del volunteers at a cat cafe modeled on the real-life one, and Charlie (and other feline residents of the real cafe) became characters. Charlie, in the story, winds up adopted by Del and goes home with him.

Sadly, Charlie in real life was in too much pain from conditions that couldn’t be treated. He crossed the Rainbow Bridge on July 7 of this year. The cafe has a small memorial to him on top of one of the shelves (where the other cats can’t get to it), and the cafe’s owner gave me permission to use one of my photos of Charlie as part of the cover art for this book.

To find out more about the Kitty Cat Cafe and Adoption Lounge, located in Peabody, Massachusetts, visit their website, where you can learn how the cafe operates, schedule a visit, and/or make a donation to help them care for the current kitty residents.

Fill the Empty Spaces will be available for Kindle preorder on Sept. 28, and will be released for Kindle and in paperback on Oct. 12.

One More Week…

Posted on by karennacolcroft

Of not working full-time, that is. On Monday the 18th, I start my new job as a preschool teacher’s aide. To the best of my knowledge, this is a full-time job (I’m still waiting for some final details from the school and staffing agency, and I have to admit I’m a bit irked/anxious about not having gotten all the info yet…), which will mean some experimenting and juggling as I try to form a new routine that includes time for writing and promoting my books, time to run errands and do housework, and, perhaps most importantly, time to relax and sleep. I’ve learned the hard way over the past several years that short-changing myself on time to just exist (and rest, and sleep) leads to health issues that keep me from doing *anything*, so I will be prioritizing myself and my needs over everything else as I adjust to having this job.

So far, that doesn’t look like it will affect my writing or the releases I’ve already planned for the rest of this year and 2024. But, as I wound up having to do this year, I will adjust things if needed to free up the time I need to take care of myself. Fill the Empty Spaces, slated for October 12, is still a definite, and so are the next two Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat books, Tempeh for Two in January 2024 and Take Some Tahini in July 2024, but beyond that, I’m not making any concrete plans until I see how working impacts my health, focus, and time management.

Writing Updates

Posted on by karennacolcroft

I’ve been working on a few things this past week, trying to get some stuff done and some stuff started as I prepare to go back to work. I start a new job on the 18th! Which I’m honestly a bit nervous about; it’s been a long time since I worked a full-time job, and part of me worries that my physical and mental health won’t be up to it. But I’ve made my employer aware that I have health issues, and I’m looking at this as a good stepping stone. We’ll see how it goes.

Meanwhile:

  • I’ve still been working on A Fighting Chance. And fighting *with* it. I had ideas of where the story was going to go, but the story doesn’t seem to want to go there. Even so, I think I’m hitting a good stride with it and hope to have the first draft finished before I start my job. Assuming all goes as planned, A Fighting Chance is slated for release in March.
  • I finished editing Tempeh for Two (Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat 5, the last book of the originally-published series). This involved scrapping a few plot points that I’d added the last time I edited, which were no longer relevant to the series as a whole; they’d come from a heterosexual romance novel I’d written that was intended to be part of the companion series to this one. Since I scrapped the hetero series, I decided the plot points I’d added to Tempeh not only didn’t work anymore but weren’t really needed, so I removed them. Which, fortunately, streamlined the story and re-increased the action. Tempeh for Two is slated for release in January.
  • I did final(ish) proofreading of Fill the Empty Spaces and created the cover for it! I wasn’t sure I liked the cover at first, especially since one of the features I needed in the GIMP program to make the cover I wanted doesn’t seem to be working on the newest version of the program so I had to find a workaround. But the cover has grown on me, and I’m particularly happy to have been permitted to include Charlie the Sweater Cat on it. Charlie was a resident at the cat cafe where I volunteer; due to a cluster of health issues, he unfortunately had to be put down at the beginning of July. He became a character of sorts in Fill the Empty Spaces, though, and the owner of the cafe approved that and granted me permission to use one of the photos I took of Charlie as part of the cover art. Fill the Empty Spaces will be available for preorder on the 28th of this month, and will be released in Kindle and paperback formats on Oct. 12! (Stay tuned for whether I put this one in KU; based on some issues other authors have been experiencing lately with KU, I’m considering not going that route with this book, but I haven’t completely decided yet.) I’ll share the cover here soon, but I’ve promised to reveal it in my newsletter first.
  • I started plotting the rewrite I’ve decided I need to do on Take Some Tahini (Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat 6, the first *new* RWDEM book since 2014!) I love this book as I’ve written it, but it’s kind of a “breather episode” of the series, and I have the feeling the lower-stakes, lower-action nature of it won’t meet reader wants or expectations. So I’m revamping it to match the stakes and action level to the previous books of the series, and I will probably be pulling the “breather” aspects of the story to release as a freebie or a newsletter subscriber perk. Take Some Tahini is slated for release in July 2024.

 

Skipping This Week

Posted on by karennacolcroft

Yes, I’m doing a blog post saying that I’m skipping doing a blog post… Because making sense is not part of being a writer, at least in my case. I have quite a few things going on this week, including trying to make the cover for Fill the Empty Spaces, which would be going much more easily if the developers of the GIMP program would fix the known bug that’s causing me to be unable to use one of the program functions I need…

Anyway, so I’ll be spending my day dealing with that, because there’s now less than a month until Fill the Empty Spaces goes up for preorder! I hope your August has gone well and that you have an easy transition into September.

This is the picture I’ve chosen to represent Del, the main character of Fill the Empty Spaces, though I might change my mind between now and the time I actually finish the cover…

My Book Hates Me

Posted on by karennacolcroft

I’ve been working for the past several weeks on a novel with the working title A Fighting Chance. This is a follow-up to Chance Met, the novel I released in March, and continues the story of werewolf Trey Damone and psychic Jeremiah Crawford, along with Trey’s seven-year-old son Mikey. (For those who’ve read Chance Met and Hummus on Rye: Mikey was 6 in those books. His birthday occurs between books in the universe’s timeline, so he’s 7 by the time this book takes place.)

I was excited about this book when I started working on it. I liked getting back into Trey’s and Jeremiah’s minds and continuing the storyline of their relationship and Trey’s efforts to protect Mikey from the family who is trying to take Mikey away.

But, as sometimes happens with writing, now I’m getting stuck in various points of the story. I can’t quite get the plot to cooperate and fit with what happens in other books that take place in the same universe and the same approximate time frame. And I can’t manage to get Trey and Jeremiah in bed together, which…it’s a romance, sex is kinda supposed to happen between these characters. (Note: Romance with one or more asexual characters and no sexual activity at all is completely valid; it just doesn’t work for *these* characters given that there is sexual attraction and activity in Chance Met.) But the other pieces of the plot are taking up so much page count and story time that there just hasn’t been a point where Trey and Jeremiah have been able to do anything sexual. They aren’t even together for a good third of the story so far.

I don’t know if this book is going to work out as I planned. Right now part of me wants to scrap the whole thing and give up on it entirely; part wants to scrap most of what I’ve written so far and start over from scratch; and part wants to keep going with the way the story is and see if it pulls itself together and starts cooperating with me.

I love being a writer. But I’m a far bigger fan of *having written* than I am of *writing* sometimes…

Snippet from A Fighting Chance

Posted on by karennacolcroft

A Fighting Chance is the book I’m currently working on. It’s the follow-up to Chance Met, continuing Trey and Jeremiah’s story. Writing it hasn’t been exactly easy; I keep writing things that I then realize belong later in the story, so then I have to rearrange things. (This is what happens when I don’t thoroughly plot the book in advance; I’m doing the “follow the characters where they lead” thing with this one.)

Since I’m deeply involved in trying to finish writing the first draft of this book by my target date of August 6, and I’m also preparing for a trip to Prince Edward Island this week, instead of writing a longer blog post I’m choosing to just share a tidbit from A Fighting Chance. So here we go:

For only a moment, Trey wasn’t sure he’d heard Jeremiah correctly. He’d just confessed to Jeremiah that he was a frigging werewolf, for crying out loud. Jeremiah’s reaction couldn’t have been to say he loved Trey.

But that was exactly what he’d said. He loved Trey. And Trey loved him. Having heard Jeremiah say it, Trey was easily able to say it back.

Jeremiah’s arms tightened around him. “I’m so glad you said that.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t?” Trey said, trying to keep his tone light. “How could you not know?”

“I don’t read your mind without your permission.” Jeremiah made a soft sound that might have been a laugh. “And I knowing and believing aren’t always the same thing.”

“That they aren’t.” Trey nuzzled the other man’s throat then pulled away. “This was not the reaction I pictured when I rehearsed telling you about the werewolf thing. I was kind of envisioning you running screaming out of here.”

“That might worry your neighbors.” Jeremiah grinned. “I already knew, Trey, remember? And it would take a lot more than that to scare me away.”

“Daddy, can I come back yet?” Mikey asked from the kitchen.

Trey rolled his eyes. The apartment wasn’t all that big, and he and Jeremiah hadn’t exactly kept their voices down. Mikey had probably heard every word they’d said. Not that they had discussed anything Mikey couldn’t hear. Privacy simply would have been nice. “Yes, bud, you can come back.”

Mikey walked in and knelt beside the coffee table. “Can I have another piece of pizza? I ate all of the other one. Even the crust.”

“Go ahead.” Bemused, Trey watched his son pull another slice out of the pizza box and take a bite. “Thank you for being patient.”

“You’re welcome,” Mikey said through a mouthful of pizza.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Trey said automatically. “Were you listening while you were in the kitchen?”

Mikey shook his head and swallowed loudly. “You didn’t want me to. Except it’s hard not to hear you, so I was making up a song in my head so I wouldn’t.”

“I didn’t know you made up songs.” Looking interested, Jeremiah leaned forward and took a piece of pizza. “Will you sing it for me?”

“Maybe, but it’s not done yet.” Mikey put down his pizza. “Are you going to be here more, Jeremiah?”

“What do you mean?” Jeremiah bit into his pizza.

“Daddy and you are boyfriends, right? And you just had a ‘grownup talk.’” The boy made air quotes with his fingers. “Did you talk about living with us?”

Trey snorted, and Jeremiah started coughing and pounding his chest with a fist. Concerned, Trey patted Jeremiah’s back. “Choking isn’t recommended.”

“When pizza attacks,” Jeremiah gasped between coughs.

“I guess that’s a no.” Mikey looked disappointed. “But you’d need to ask if it’s okay to live here anyway.”

“I would?” Jeremiah asked.

“Yeah, ’cause…” Mikey looked at Trey. “Never mind.”

“Because the landlord won’t let people just randomly move in,” Trey filled in smoothly. His heart pounded. Thank god Jeremiah didn’t have werewolf-level senses; hopefully he wouldn’t notice Trey’s anxiousness. Mikey knew he had to watch what he said about Trey and the other pack members, but the kid was only seven. Seven-year-olds sometimes forgot to be careful.

Fortunately, Jeremiah seemed to accept the landlord excuse. “Yeah, I’d have to be on the lease or something. Anyway, Mikey, I’m honored that you want me to move in, but it isn’t the right time just yet.” To Trey’s relief, he sounded amused.

To fend off any further questions, Trey decided to just tell Mikey what he and Jeremiah had discussed. “I told Jeremiah that I’m a werewolf.”

“Oh.” Mikey picked up his pizza slice again. “He knew, right?”

Jeremiah laughed. “Yes, Mikey. I knew something, anyway. And now I know the truth, and it’s okay.”

“Good. Daddy can’t help it.” Mikey looked at the pizza slice and set it back down. “Maybe I don’t want this. Sorry, Daddy.”

“It’s all right. I’ll eat it.” Trey’s head was spinning. The conversation with Jeremiah had gone far too smoothly, and he couldn’t help feeling like something was about to go horribly wrong. The post-hunt fog in his brain wasn’t helping. “Jeremiah, I told you now because…Well, because I love you, like I said. But because if something’s happening with Mikey, I need you to know the truth so you can help us.”

“I’m here.” Jeremiah spoke quietly, but those two words carried such strong emotion Trey’s eyes watered. “Whatever you need. Including someone to take care of the small fry on full moon nights.”

Healing My Writing

Posted on by karennacolcroft

I love writing books.

For several years, I couldn’t say that. Most of my life, writing was therapy for me. It was how I sorted out all the “how to human” questions I had as an undiagnosed neurodivergent person. It was how I explored gender and relationships during times when I couldn’t explore those in my own life. It was how I processed trauma, how I fixed things, how I tried to figure things out.

At some points in my life, it was literally how I stayed alive.

Then, in 2014ish, I started struggling. At that point, I was five years into being a published author. My books were selling poorly, and sales were getting worse all the time. Publishers were going out of business, in one case taking my rights to my books with them. (They allegedly sent me rights reversion notices for all the books; I never received those notices and my emails requesting that the notices be re-sent were ignored.) Publishers were doing… let’s say interesting mathematics when it came to calculating royalties.

I was struggling with the pace I’d set myself; I was writing both romance and young adult fiction, and I was so afraid readers would forget me if too much time passed that I was pushing myself to write a book or more every single month. But the idea well was running dry, and I was starting to get feedback and criticism about repetitious characters and plots. Which didn’t help my mental state or my view of my writing, which meant my writing suffered even more.

At this time, I was also dealing with some personal life/mental health stuff. Past trauma resurfaced along with the infliction of new trauma at the hands of someone I trusted. Since the trauma was sexual, I became unable to write sexual content–which was necessary content in my romances. It all culminated in my having such a massive panic attack while trying to write that I almost had to be hospitalized.

I stopped writing romances in 2015. My novel Dawn Over Dayfield–which was more romantic suspense than actual romance and included only one very brief sexual scene–was the last Karenna Colcroft thing I wrote before I gave up entirely on romance writing and tried to focus on my young adult books. But once Karenna Colcroft was put into hibernation, my YA writing started to suffer as well. My last YA novel (under the author name Jo Ramsey) was written in 2016 and published in 2017… and then I gave up entirely on writing. For the next several years, other than occasional blog posts and really long Facebook posts, I wrote nothing.

After a couple-few years, I started writing again. This time, I wrote nonfiction books connected to the channeling and mindset coaching business I was attempting to build (https://riverlightbearer.com). I enjoyed creating those books and started thinking maybe I could write *something* again.

In 2020, during the pandemic days of sitting at home with little to do, my partner and I were talking about the shortage of children’s fiction that includes accurate, positive depictions of pagan spirituality, alternative family structures, and other concepts. My partner looks after an elementary-school-aged girl; I have a grandson about the same age. I said to myself, “I’m a writer. Maybe I could write books for those two kids that have the concepts my partner and I talked about.” So I did. I wrote a series that currently numbers five books; it was supposed to be 8, but one of the plot points in book 6 gave me issues because it was too close to something that had just happened in my own life. But those five books did get written, and as with the nonfiction, I chose to self-publish them. (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BC4TVKZ3)

And then in 2021, when my younger kid was staying with me for the summer and I was trying to find ways to occupy myself without intruding into the space they were using while staying here, I started rereading some of my published books. For a few years, I’d bandied about the idea of rereleasing my Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat series, but I kept deciding not to. I didn’t want to do the work of editing the books. I didn’t think they would sell. I didn’t have time. I came up with a ton of reasons that all boiled down to the fact that I was still recovering/healing from the issues in 2014 and 2015, and I simply wasn’t ready to resurrect Karenna Colcroft and try writing again.

But in 2021, rereading those books, I thought, “Damn, these are GOOD! I was a good writer.” And I decided it was time for Kyle, Tobias, and their friends to see the light of day again. I even wrote three brand-new romance novels, one of which was published last year; the other two won’t be published because they are heterosexual romance, and I realized pretty quickly in 2022 that focusing on male/male romance both results in better connections with readers and other authors *and* is better for my mental health. (Though one of those other two novels will be scavenged to form the plot of Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat 7, and some components of the other are forming part of the framework and plot of A Fighting Chance, my current work-in-progress that’s a follow-up to Chance Met.)

And seeing that I was able to update and revise the RWDEM novels, that readers wanted them and that readers and authors from the “before times” remembered me and were happy to see me back, I started loving writing again.

Well… mostly. Sometimes the characters and plot points still give me angst, and don’t even get me started about writing the *blurbs*. But I am enjoying writing books again. And I’m excited to start sharing new things as well as rereleasing some of my favorites from my previously-published works.

Release Week!

Posted on by karennacolcroft

Happy July! This week marks the release of the newly revised and updated version of Try the Tofu (Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat 4). I’m so glad to bring Tobias’s perspective back to the series; unlike the first three books, Try the Tofu is narrated by Tobias Rogan, the Alpha who is mated to the world’s only(?) gay vegan werewolf. Of course, his mate, Kyle Slidell, still plays a major role, but Try the Tofu and book five of the series, Tempeh for Two, are very much Tobias’s stories as the werewolf world faces a threat from a very unexpected source.

Because we’re in Tobias’s head for this book, in addition to better understanding who he is and why, we get a deeper glimpse into the traumas he’s experienced and the PTSD he lives with. Some parts of this book were difficult to write and may be painful or triggering for readers. Tobias is a strong, powerful Alpha, but that doesn’t mean he’s “gotten over” the traumatic events of his past. He does experience PTSD. He has anger issues. Despite being a werewolf, he is very human.

But he is also arguably the most powerful Alpha in the United States. He’s a compassionate leader and friend, a caring partner, and an advocate for those like him who have lived through trauma and live with its aftermath.

I hope readers enjoy getting to know him on a new level in this book! Try the Tofu is available on Amazon for Kindle preorder and will release Thursday, July 13, in Kindle and paperback formats.

I Finished!

Posted on by karennacolcroft

Last week, I finished writing Fill the Empty Spaces! I thought I’d finished this back in last March, but when I sat down to edit it a few weeks ago, the characters and I agreed that the story needed to continue a little longer. So I started working on a continuation.

It wasn’t easy. Sometimes I wasn’t entirely sure where the story was going, and Del Nethercott, the narrator, wasn’t being especially helpful. And I kind of wanted to work on something else, something new, so I was being a bit oppositional as the author. But we got there eventually.

As originally written, the story was not a romance. There was no happily-ever-after or even happy-for-now at the end; instead, there was “Del isn’t ready for a relationship yet but when he is, Lochlan will be waiting.” A hopeful ending, sealed with a kiss, but not a typical romance ending. Which made sense to me. The story begins a month after Del lost his long-term partner, Austin. Although the book spans several months, Del and Austin had been together for over twenty years, and Del’s grief is deep. By the end of the story, he knows he’s falling for Lochlan, but he isn’t ready to move on to a new relationship yet. Hence the kiss and the hopeful ending.

The extension of the story changes that by continuing the story for another month. By the end of the book, nearly six months have passed since Austin’s death. Del is still grieving, but he’s had a bit more time to process losing Austin and to consider what he truly wants with Lochlan. The story as it is now ends with a more heated kiss and a declaration of love on both sides, along with the agreement that while they’re going to take things slowly, they are now in a relationship. This book does not include any sex, so those who are looking for high heat and searing sex scenes might not be pleased, but a sex scene didn’t feel true to either character.

Fill the Empty Spaces is scheduled for release on October 13. The image below is NOT the actual cover; it’s just what I used as inspiration and a place-holder when posting about the book online.