I completely forgot to update my blog when I released Reluctant Godmother #2! How silly of me.

I’m insanely proud of this book. My copyeditor, the wonderful Katie St. John-Shin, raved about it as she read it. My dad texted me this morning to let me know he’s halfway done, and wanted nothing more than to tell everyone he meets about it (except that he’s a trucker, and that talking to other truckers about fairy godmothers would be, shall we say, awkward). Oh, the warm fuzzies that brings!

The weft and wend of this story…it has so many threads to pull together, I often despaired I would do a clumsy job of it. I worried through the entire two years that I wouldn’t be able to pull off what I had planned. It tried many times to spiral out of control, to grow steadily larger until it finally topped out at about 180,000 words (pre-edits). I had pulled apart the structure of the first act so many times, I couldn’t remember what was where as I was writing the second half. For most of the final haul, I felt like I was flying blind. Had I left that part in? Did I mention this thing earlier? What was I forgetting? Was this character a jerk the whole time, or had I written it to gradually build confusion? The day my mom finished reading the first book and asked me if we’d find out about what was going on at the end in the next book, I about gave up (how was I supposed to write a decent sequel when I could barely remember the beginning of the second, let alone the ending of the first?!). Thankfully, I didn’t.

Because none of that is why I’m so proud of this book.

I started writing A Wand a Day in September of 2016 and finished almost exactly two years later, in September of 2018. Going back over my productivity tracker, I would write a few thousand words…then put it down for a month. Write a few thousand words, put it down for a month. And it’s no wonder. I got tremendously sick for two months in the spring of 2017. When I was finally feeling better, my mom ended up in the hospital. Then my son got sick. Then my husband needed a bone marrow biopsy. Then my cousin spent a month in a medically-induced coma. Then I got sick again. 2017 was not a great year.

2018 opened with tremendous stress, culminating in a sudden move to California in April. By the end of the summer, I was sick again, this time with breathing issues we’re still trying to figure out six months later. So, healthwise, it’s been a rough road. My stubborn refusal to let the book go is the only reason it’s available now.

But more than that, this book saw me through a complete transformation of self. If One Good Wand was hard to write because it dredged up all my insecurities, past troubles, and unresolved feelings, A Wand a Day nearly did me in.

In the course of the last two years, I lost both of my muses to interpersonal complications. Given that their likenesses form important parts of Tessa’s world, writing became a study in constant heartache. The Chisel’s behavior became a frustrating parallel that made me want to collapse on the keyboard every time he appeared on the page. Mueller wouldn’t talk to Tessa until last August, when I finally figured out a reason for his reticence. (Yes–August, in the last 30,000 words of the novel. Fixing their interactions was a whole edit in and of itself.) I no longer have my alpha reader and sounding board, either. So Tessa’s struggle throughout the book to hold onto a life that makes sense mirrored my own losses and fears (ironic, since I had planned her life that way in 2015). And that was the hardest thing I’ve ever put into a story, bar none.

As spoken-word poet Shane Koyczan says, “If your heart is broken, make art with the pieces.”

And so I present The Reluctant Godmother’s second adventure, A Wand a Day. Give it a read if you’ve read her first, and if you haven’t, you can snag that on Amazon for 99 cents.

Tessa Hargitay may have successfully pulled off her first fairytale ending as a press-ganged fairy godmother, but that doesn’t mean she’s ready to accept the ballgowns,

beehives, and responsibilities that go with it. In fact, all she wants is a paycheck that pays the bills and gets her back on her feet in the Mundane world.

Unfortunately for Tessa, magic has other plans.

Between her witchy boss’s push to promote her to personal assistant and the Fairy Godmothers Union’s bubbly attempts to recruit her, Tessa’s plan to return to normal human life isn’t going so well. Add to that a spoiled princess she’d rather strangle than provide a fairytale ending for, and her life couldn’t be more complicated. (Except for the hunky men of magic wanting to heal her broken heart and the monsters hungering for her new power…)

One way or the other, she’s going to have to make a choice – Light or Dark, Magic or Mundane – before the beasts that prowl the woods and boardrooms of Colorado decide her future for her.

Buy a copy from Amazon!