It's official! Today is the birth date for Lucky Baby, my fourth novel. It marks a new direction in my writing, and I'm so excited to see how people respond to it. Lucky Baby is about a motely collection of flawed people who find the strength and courage to become a family. They do it through Chinese adoption, but what I'm exploring in this novel is not just adoption, but what it means to love. I'm fascinated by how strangers and people wholly unrelated to each other can develop such strong attachment to each other that not even the worst circumstances can tear them apart. How does this happen? Where do we find that kind of love?
The subject of adoption from China is something so dear to my heart that it made this an extremely difficult book to write because I wanted it to be P-E-R-F-E-C-T. My personal expectations were so strenuous, I froze up at one point and had to call my wonderful writing coach to get me over the block. But out of that challenge, I found a new direction for my work that I'm thrilled about. In Lucky Baby, you'll see that even though the characters and conflicts are very real, there are a few touches of the other-worldly as well. Call it "magical realism" or "mysticism" or a touch of the miraculous--I wanted to show that the hand of God and the work of faith in our lives is something that can't always be explained or quantified. Sometimes, it just is a mystery, and that's okay.
Those of you who are fans of my SAHM I Am series have come to appreciate the humor and believability of the characters. Because of the subject matter, I wasn't able to make Lucky Baby as humorous. It's a lot more serious. But the characters are just as real, and I hope that the story will touch your heart. I also hope you'll enjoy the touch of fantasy in the story, too. It's something different and fresh for me, and I am already looking forward to creating new stories that will have this fanciful flavor. And if you are hoping for more humor as well, rest assured, I think it will creep back into upcoming stories. I sort of can't help it.
In celebration of all this newness, I've completely revamped my website. I did the graphic work and my husband is doing the coding on it. It's very satisfying to see all our hard work coming together. We're still putting some finishing touches on it, but when it's done, it's going to be an extremely interactive site. So many of my SAHM I Am fans have written to me, wishing they had an online community like the one portrayed in those books. Well, this isn't an email loop, but eventually, I hope this site becomes just that sort of community--a place for not just fans of my books, but anyone who loves to read and who enjoys interacting with other fans. I hope you will consider registering (it's the orange tag on the upper right corner) and being a part of it all as we move forward!
