The universe wants me to write about the inspiration for this book and I don’t want to.

Liability.

Contemporary: FARRELLTON FOSTER FAMILY
Betrayed (#1) – wm: What happens when your best friend betrays you? Can you forgive a teenage mistake?
Forbidden (#2) – wm: Love between foster siblings should be forbidden… unless you’ve never met until now.
Liability (#3) – wlw: When Maiden Heaven crashed into Jessica’s organised life, nothing would be the same again…

This series started out as me trying to write a trope that I don’t like – secret baby. Betrayed is my attempt at a secret baby book but with a secret and without a lie.

Forbidden followed on as a natural progression – what if two people share the same foster mother but at different times? The characters basically came up with this one themselves, which often happens when I’m writing a series – side characters arrive and beg for their own book.

Liability is based on the Lorde song with the same name. But it also opens with a scene inspired by a car crash. Back before my marriage spectacularly exploded (which we won’t go into here). Anyway, back then, when I was still trying to impress him, I opened this book with a story he’d told me a million times about how he crashed his Mini. It’s a cracker of a story – I was married to him for a reason, he’s incredibly charming and funny when you agree with him. He’s also (redacted). That’s a story for my therapist (and that unpublished book in my drawer).

I was happily ignoring all of this, never intending to write about my inspiration for this book. I think I feel a bit embarrased about how much effort I put into trying to impress him and show him that he wasn’t excluded from my creativity and that he didn’t need to be jealous of it because sometimes it included him (or his favourite story), even if it wasn’t about him. (Obviously not because it’s a sapphic book).

Anyway…. (draw that word out in a long breath)

One of my sons is very excited because the ex-husband has bought a new Mini. It’s an old Mini, a shell of one, and they are going to restore it together. This crash story has been told again… It’s a very cool project but boy does it remind me of how I felt when I wrote Liability and how complicated those feelings are now. Gosh, those feelings are complicated and I can’t even talk about the most complex one of all – how unfair this cool project for all the siblings.

Authors are always being told to market their backlist, but sometimes a backlist book reminds me of who I used to be and I’m not sure I want the reminder. Also, by putting this out in public pretty much guarantees that I’ll get a strongly worded email about how I’m ‘always like this’, how I’m toxic for talking about this, and blah blah.

It’s been over two years since the divorce finalised. Two years of regaining my independance and confidence (and occasionally writing angry books about things that have happened since like Ravishing Among the Roses). I am proud of Liability as a book. I just wish I hadn’t tried so hard to impress someone who wasn’t interested.