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For the past five years, I’ve written books. Young Adult books. Contemporary Romance books. Humorous books. All kinds of books. Only two of these have been published so far (because, if I’m being honest here, only two have been worth publishing)—both under the Contemporary Romance genre. But being the totally decisive person I am, I’m changing things yet again. Some people prefer to be focused in their careers; I prefer to be a bit schizophrenic in mine. It works. Sorta.

My newest novel, SWAY amzn.to/1qDiw0C,  released last week. Unlike The Wedding Game and Love Gone Wild before it, this book is classified as New Adult. How do I know this? Because I Googled it, of course. And here’s what I found: New Adult fiction encompasses the 18-25 age group, meaning the male/female protagonists fall in that age range. On top of that, New Adult fiction tends to focus on the characters leaving home, exploring sexuality, and navigating through higher education and career choices. Which, coincidentally, is what my characters in this novel are going through.

Now, just to be clear, SWAY is a fairly clean read—though there might be a few references to things and situations one might not normally find in an inspirational book. But going into it, that was my plan. My biggest desire in life is to be real with people—at home, at the grocery store, at my kid’s school, at ballgames. Case in point: my Facebook and Twitter posts normally feature my latest mess-ups. Like the time I let my daughter give me a make-over and then drove to the grocery store for a gallon of milk shortly after. I was out of the car and walking inside when I got a glimpse of myself in one of those claw-game mirrors. My eyes were blue from eyelash to eyebrow and beyond. My cheeks were a weird shade of red and brown because I think my daughter mixed a little eyeliner in with the blush to make things interesting. Interesting. That’s a word for it.

Mortified, I turned on my heel and practically ran back to my car. Thank God it was dark outside.

Then there was the time I made homemade salsa and then promptly broke half the jars because I forgot about the concept of not putting hot jars into something cold. Or the time I climbed on a treadmill at Sears only to hear my sister say, “You have toilet paper hanging out of your pants.” And that’s when I realized the workers who’d been laughing hysterically behind me for a couple of minutes were actually laughing at me.

This sort of thing happens often. I could go on and on with stories, but I’m pretty sure I would bore you to death. Or maybe I wouldn’t. Whichever, there’s only so much humiliation I can take.

Anyway, my goal in life is to be real. To be honest. Because we all do things we shouldn’t do, we all have thoughts we shouldn’t have, we all say things we shouldn’t say, we all feel things we shouldn’t feel. And my hope is that my characters reflect that. And really, when it comes down to it, God’s grace is in the middle of all our screw-ups. And mine are frequent. And my characters’ are frequent. And if you’re like me or them, yours are frequent too.

Bottom line: my next few books—like SWAY—will fall in the New Adult genre. I hope you’ll read them. I hope you’ll like them. I hope you’ll identify with them. Either way, I appreciate the chance to share the stories with you.

Happy reading!

Amy