Today marks the 10 day countdown mark for the the release debut of The Lake Michigan Affair on April 14th. To mark this countdown. I will be sharing a fact, excerpt, and interesting tidbits about the upcoming book. Each day I will share something new to get you all ready for debut day!
Fact #1: The Lake Michigan Affair was written during Nanao-Wri-Mo 2017
If you are not familiar with NanoWriMo it stands for National Novel Writing Month and is held annually each November. The premise of the program is that you have one month to write a novel. You can write at your own pace and log it on their webiste. This program is completely free, and through the month of November there are usually local meet-ups where authors can share, support and kick off the month together. If you want to learn more about this awesome program, look into it here.
The Lake Michigan Affair would be my second book that I’ve written. I knew that I wanted to write a romance with a power imbalance, and the nuances contained therein. I first thought that I this would be a story about a woman having an affair with a political figure, but as I mulled through it, I got a better idea of the character of Rosalie and I just knew that it had to be a priest that she falls for. However, it had to be bigger, not a parish priest, and that is how I came to settle on the character of Sebastian, being a Catholic Bishop of Chicago. I remember having the characters in my head at my first ever NanoWriMo meet-up. As the other authors went around the circle and shared what they were working on, my heart began to beat in my throat. As a Catholic, in a predominantly Catholic community, I knew that just the mention of the subject matter could result in serious backlash. So when my time came I simply said, “it’s about a woman who is in a terrible marriage and finds love through an affair.” That was enough to satisfy the group.
For the next month, I wrote like a mad woman. I had my characters, and I knew how I wanted the book to end but the rest came to me as I wrote. I completed the novel in the month of November thus “winning” NanoWritMo 2017. The book that I ended up with at the end of that month is not the book you’ll see in ten days. There have been wonderful revisions where the characters have revealed more of themselves, their desires, and their wish for a happily ever after.
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