I dedicate this #tbt #throwbackthursday to Jackson Alexander.

As I’m working on Book 5, Say You Will, it’s hard not to think back to the beginning of the series. The characters have grown and changed so much but no one more so than Jackson.

Not many know this but One More Day was my first manuscript. I wrote it when I was miserable in graduate school and the original draft was terrifyingly awful but so much fun to work on. I went on to publish several short erotic pieces and gave up on that first manuscript because no one seemed to think it had commercial potential.

A book about a single dad with a dead wife? #depressing

A multi-racial family set in the middle of Virginia. #really

A heroine who starts off by lying to the hero? #justno

But yet despite all the rejections, I was never able to let these characters go. Mainly because I wanted to see what would happen to them for my own sake. So I finished the book and published it independently. Now here we are 18 months later. One More Day has sold almost 100,000 copies and I’ve blown past the 1/2 million total sales mark that I originally set for myself. The Alexanders keep proving the naysayers wrong and proving to me that I have the most amazing fans ever.

Thank you for being so great and for loving my flawed but unforgettable heroes.