Foreword
Once upon a time, there was a quiet eighteen-year-old college student who was a budding writer. It just so happens that she also loved metal music.
Yes, that eighteen-year-old was yours truly.
When I was eighteen, I wrote most of my first novel. I didn’t quite finish it, because I was writing it in the summer between the spring and fall semesters of my freshman and sophomore years in college, and school started before I reached the end of the story. But when I went back to school, one night in September, four of my girlfriends/ roommates wanted to read it. So we popped some popcorn and lay on my bed and the floor of my room while I read to them my almost-finished first (kind of) romance book called Bottom of My Heart. Yes, it had some clichés and some juvenile writing, and I didn’t finish writing the last two chapters until six years later, but I had my girlfriends giggling and tittering, oohing and ahhing, gasping with delight and wondering how it ended. The sex scenes were tame, and some of the dialogue was so bad, it was downright embarrassing. But I was a writer. Oh, yes, I was, and I had a small audience who were rooting for the heroine.
That heroine’s name was Valerie, and that book became the basis of what has become my hugest rock star book ever, the book you are getting to read right now, Bullet. My husband had teased me about all the “trunk novels” I had written—mostly finished books and some completed books that I’d never thought were good enough to share. Bottom of My Heart was definitely one of those books just not good enough, because I knew the plot. There was no way it would ever work today.
But then…
All it takes is a spark. I kept thinking about that old book, because it had a special place in my heart. I pulled it out of the trunk (yes, I really keep all my old writing in a trunk!) but I still didn’t read it. Not yet. But I kept thinking about it, and inspiration hit. I knew Bottom of My Heart was more a young girl’s fantasy, but I realized there was a great way I could make it a really good book with just a few plot changes.
And that’s when I started writing Bullet. I knew it was going to be one of my longer books, and when I first started writing it, I even said on Facebook that I thought it would wind up being between 90,000 and 100,000 words…definitely one of my longer books. Well, I bypassed that amount sometime in January, and it kept growing. I know what publishers say—more than 90 and you’ll lose your audience. But I’m calling bullshit. This story is epic, and it deserves to be told in a big way.
Out of all the books I’ve ever written, this is the one I’m most excited to share with my fans. Most of the characters in my books do some growing up, but we get to see Valerie begin life as a college freshman and end up…well, much further down the road. We see Valerie mature from naïve youngster to a woman who discovers her sexuality and finds love in the end. And, because this is an epic book, following her story for several years, it’s not a typical romance. We see Valerie in some serious relationships, and the question ultimately is whom does she end up with? Is he the right guy?
I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I have.
Jade, February 2013