Touch Me Not is near and dear to my heart, as it is the first romance novel I ever wrote. I wasn't sure I could do it. I had this idea, and Jennifer, my publisher, pushed me to write it. She believed in me, and so I sat down and turned the idea into a real story on paper. I wasn't sure if it was any good or if people would like it. I was so scared when I sent it to her.
But she liked it, and so it went on to be released into the world.
The day it came out, I threw up the entire day. One of my best friends in this entire world kept telling me to calm down. That the book was good. She loved it. Chazz kept me from going off the deep end that entire week. She does this a lot when I release romance novels.
Romance is hard for me to write. I'm much more comfortable with paranormal and horror. Romance takes a lot out of me, because I feel the words I write. When my characters hurt, so do I. Some days I write a scene, and it's all I can do not to cry my eyes out the entire day. If I don't feel it, how can I expect my reader to feel it? I try to put everything I'm feeling into my words, and I hope I've done that.
Originally, I was only going to do a wedding novella for Nik and Lily, but as I read back through Touch Me Not, I found myself cringing at the bad writing. I've learned and grown a lot since I first wrote it. My publisher agreed to let me go in and do an anniversary edition that not only cleans up the writing, but I was able to fix a few things and add in additional content.
Lily and Nik deserved a first kiss scene 😊
I hope you all love what I've done with the new edition and enjoy the brothers and their Babby as they try to stay out of reach of her wooden spoon she likes to whack them with.