Book twelve arrived like a guest I'd been waiting for.
I could feel it coming. The story had told me everything it needed to tell. The heroines had found their home. Lark Mesa was fully built. And I was standing at the edge of something I'd actually completed.
I remember finishing the last page and sitting with the screen in front of me, just staring. I'd done it. I'd actually done it. I'd written twelve books in twenty-two months. I'd built a world. I'd created these women. I'd learned that I was capable of something I didn't know was in me.
Twenty-two months from not knowing if I could survive this to having built something that mattered.
The finish line wasn't about being the best writer. It wasn't about reviews or bestseller lists or any of that noise. The finish line was about me standing on the other side of something that had terrified me, proving to myself and to my daughter that I could build something that lasted. That I could believe in myself. That I could do hard things.
The finish line was freedom.