Standing at the edge of a choice I'd never imagined making, I had to ask myself: What do I actually want to build?
Not what looked respectable from the outside. Not what was practical, safe, or easy to explain. Not the familiar Southern answer of working harder, carrying more, and making difficulty look effortless. What did I want?
I wanted to write about women like the ones I knew—women in their forties and fifties who'd survived things, who'd rebuilt themselves, who knew that starting over wasn't the same as starting from scratch. Women who understood that sometimes the best love stories aren't about meeting the person—they're about finally being ready to be loved.
I wanted to do this while my daughter was here. While I could be present for the small moments that mattered.
I wanted to prove to myself that I could create something that lasted. Something that was mine.
So I decided: I would write a series. Twelve books. One year. And I would do it in Lark Mesa, a Texas Hill Country town that would become as real to me as the life I was living, as real as the pain I was carrying, as real as the hope I was learning to feel again.
The decision didn't make the fear go away. But it gave the fear somewhere to go. It gave me a direction. It gave my daughter permission to watch me believe in something, even if I was terrified.