THE END, she wrote giddily.

THE END

The two most favorite words in any author’s arsenal are:  THE END.  And I’m happy to report, no, I’m THRILLED to report, that I wrote them yesterday.  I finished the first draft of my new inspirational romance, Roadtrip to Redemption.  This was a huge milestone for me because I’ve been working on this sucker for such a long time!

I remember talking to my friend Anne about the concept while we were sitting at a summer baseball game while both our sons were playing.  I shared with her the premise and the main character, and some of the adventures she’d experience.  Anne loved the idea and I remember her telling me that it was a unique idea: that there weren’t a whole lot of books on the market that were similar.

Of course, that’s one of those good news/bad news things in the publishing world.  It’s good to have a unique, innovative idea.  It’s bad to not be able to fit into any of their established imprints/lines.

I’ve done a lot of other things since having that conversation with Anne about Roadtrip (or R2R as it’s become in shorthand).  I went through rounds of submitting my two contemporary romances, Inner Diva and Hidden Agenda to major publishers, and racked up a few rejections.  I stuck my toe in the self-pubbing e-book world when I released Inner Diva to Kindle and Nook.  A year later, a group of authors and I launched Random Moon Books, along with my launch title, Keeper by Surprise.

Still, chugging along on the back burner, was R2R.  When I think back to that conversation with Anne and do the math, it dawned on me that the last time my son and her son played together on a baseball team was in August of 2010!  Was it really that long ago that I came up with the concept?  If so, that’s the longest it’s ever taken me to write a book.

However, it’s done!  It’s the story of a middle-aged woman, Leslie, who gets served with divorce papers due to her husband’s mid-life crisis.  A teacher, she faces an empty summer full of nothing.  She decides to hit the road and just drive where God and the spirit leads her.  Along the way, she realizes that if she opens herself to God’s will to use her as He will, the possibilities to help others less fortunate than her, are limitless.

I never really intended for Leslie to fall in love along the way.  But she sure did.  When she stepped foot into the beach house where she and her family had spent summer after summer of her childhood, there sat Hank, a Harrison Ford look-alike who was good with his hands, working on that old place and making it shine.

I love this book, and hope that eventually when it gets released, that you will too.  It took on a life of its own and told ME where it wanted to go.  I was just along for the ride.  My hands shook as I wrote THE END and I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.

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