I am thrilled to announce that Gifted, the sequel to Awakening, is now available in Paperback and will be available as an ebook on Saturday (6/12). I did not intend for these two formats to release at different times, but I guess after now seven novels and a children’s book/coloring book I still don’t have the timing down—maybe when I get to eight I’ll do it right 😉 Though since it took me a full year to put Gifted out (way too long in my opinion!!!) it’s a wonder I remembered how to publish a book at all.
I’ve been debating whether or not to blame covid for this book taking me longer than any others … I still can’t decide. I hate that everything is blamed on covid—it truly drives me a little bonkers, and yet in this case, it might be at least partially true. Covid sent my kids (and everyone else’s) home from school, but when our public schools started back in person in August, we decided to keep our kids home. This was not because of covid. This was because it turned out I liked having my kids home, though I would not have realized this were it not for covid—hence the question is it covid’s fault or not…😊.
So this past school year, my boys (now 11 and 9) attended a private, faith-based, virtual school. They had a real teacher and classmates that they interacted with (online) for 1-2 hours a day and then they did their work after that. My older son was almost completely independent. My younger one seemed to need to sit on my lap to get anything accomplished! And now you understand why Gifted took an entire year!
Then you combine that with the fact that in October, we moved into a house that we had been building for eighteen months (we hit delays, of course, because of covid). You add to it that the house was not totally done – and so we’ve had workers in and out of our home for the past seven months, which for someone as introverted and private as me has been beyond challenging!!
My kids were absolute troopers through all of that upheaval. I am so proud of how they rolled with workers in the back of their webcam shots and the sound of power tools reverberating through the house while they were trying to study. They got so used to having workers here that over Christmas when the four of us were quarantined (because of covid, it turned out we were all negative), my youngest son said, “Where’s Roberto?”
My husband and I looked at him. “Roberto?”
“Yeah, we haven’t seen him in a while. Where is he?”
I said, “Roberto’s our superintendent.”
“He’s not actually part of our family,” my husband clarified.
“Oh,” my youngest said as he continued eating the Christmas dinner my mother-in-law had lovingly prepared for us even though we could not be with her.
What a year!!!! My hope for all of you and me is that this next year is a bit more normal (if there is such a thing)!
~Jacqueline