SquarePeg Books

And we are (June 30) published!

A Special Blend of Crazy is will be up for sale June 30!

A Mundane Affair of the Heart – the rough beginning of the series:

I honestly don’t know where the hell it came from, exactly. Some would even say “Dear child; you get points for trying, but you don’t know the first thing about romance, so please. Just.stop.”

I’m inclined to agree with most of that statement.

But in case you haven’t noticed, I identify as a Square Peg, and the world has constantly forced me to fit in where I decidedly Do.Not. Yes, I frequently make a fool of myself for deliberately NOT fitting in. But if I’m having fun, and it doesn’t hurt you, why do you care?

Anyhoo…

I was driving, for-friggin-ever, from a camping trip. A friend of mine was in the passenger seat, prattling on about…a story idea he had, based on some Lovecraftian-Cthulhu-esque short story he read? (I gotta be honest, I don’t really remember his source material).

So he’s going on about a crew of characters who are kinda ghostbustery, but in a Lovecraftian-Cthulhu-esque sorta way, and they can only drive these busted up, slapped together monstrosity diesel vehicles to whichever site because magic destroys anything electrical or…something. (This is the only detail of the 5 hour conversation I clearly remember). So, as I usually do, for some weird and unknown reason, I go off on an impromptu improv session about plot twists, character backstory, props, blahblahblah. (I don’t remember what I said, only that I know I said something along these lines. Did I mention I was driving? For 5 hours? One way with this cat?)

What I DO remember is this bizarre thing happening in my head: I’m feeding little comments and jokes and what not in a half-brained way to keep my passenger from feeling weird, because I don’t really drive and talk well at the same time, BUT NO ONE LISTENS TO ME WHEN I TELL THEM “I CAN DRIVE SAFELY, OR I CAN KILL US ALL. PICK ONE.”

Anyway.

I have this weird 1/3 brain thing going on:

1) I’m driving (let the evidence show I did get us home safely, and I don’t really think my passenger knew how close we were to death a couple-three times).

2) I’m trying to keep my passenger psychologically comfortable by letting my mouth ramble on about…something vaguely related to his topic, because I can’t contribute anything more than flitting surface thoughts to a conversation while I’m driving.

3) There’s a squidge of an idea squirming to life in my head. It demands my attention. All I have is a mechanic with a used pick-up truck (like the kind that get used, not the kind that could be used), in a bizarre intimate relationship with a lady who owns a coffee shop. (I know where the coffee influence came from–earlier that weekend someone brought my friend some coffee,  and he spewed out an absolutely gorgeous line that my female lead in A Special Blend of Crazy utters. It was imperative I preserve this line in all its glory, it was that fabulous.)

I have no notion of where else this romance novel came from. My friend and I have never been romantically involved. I know very little about cars. All I know about coffee is that I need it to taste like dessert or I won’t drink it, no matter how tired I am.

I also know that I CANNOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, UTTER A WORD ABOUT HOW THIS IDEA IS TRYING TO OVERTAKE MY BRAIN WHILE I’M DRIVING, to my friend. The dude is not a romance story kinda guy, and I am also trying to not kill us while getting us home.

It was a very distracting drive.

I get home, dump the contents of the truck into the front room in the rushed “I’ll get to it later” way, run to my laptop and begin typing.

The rough draft was done in three weeks. Mopping up the word barf and stitching it into something that made sense took longer–I had to research this and that, raise children, expand on this, deal with family emergencies, delete that, COVID, a job, surgeries…

There were so many wonderful scenes that got cut out because they didn’t make sense, that I slammed them into a second book, and now a third is wriggling its way forward, while at least 2-3 more are fermenting in the background.

These are not fine wines, mind you, but several people have told me they count as romance novels, so that’s what I’m going with.

But it is how this series got its start.