Wow *deep breath*

I'm taking a second, now that A LITTLE TOO HOT is out in the world, to reflect back on the last year. It was one year ago last Friday, January 17th, that I woke up with Lexie in my head. She told me she thought she might be in love with her stepbrother, Trent. I grabbed my laptop and started typing, and by that night I had the first 10K words of A LITTLE TO FAR. A couple of days later, I shot my omnipotent uber-agent an email with the pitch and asked her if NA was a thing now. (She'd always said it wasn't, but she'd just sold Cora Carmack's LOSING IT to Harper the month before.) She emailed me back and said it was a thing, but that it was still a tough sale. I sent her the first 80 pages of ALTF, which she read and loved, and we agreed to try to sub it. A week later, I'd finished the first draft. We took a few weeks to clean it up, then subbed to editors. It went to my lovely editor at HarperCollins on Friday and on Tuesday we were speaking on the phone. By Thursday we had a pre-empt we were happy with and I had a crazy deadline schedule for the next two books in the series. And that was my year.

So, I find it sort of karmic that the final book in the series would publish exactly one year from when I sent the first feeler to my agent about the idea--a year and four days after I first opened a clean Word doc and started writing Lexie's story. It's been sort of a fairy tale year, and I've met so many awesome readers and fabulous authors--people who have turned into some of my closest friends. (I'm looking at you, Jay and Katy!)

It hasn't always been easy, but it's been wild in the best possible way. It's a ride that I wish could have lasted forever, but instead of looking back, I'm looking forward.

When I wrote A LITTLE TOO FAR, it was in the two weeks that my agent had a new young adult novel that I'd written in December. We put that on the back burner when things started happening with A LITTLE TOO FAR, but I finally had a chance to go back and clean that up before Christmas, and I'm hoping for good things there. I also have some fun new adult ideas knocking around in my head that I'm looking forward to getting on paper, so to speak, in the next few months. I've contributed to a really cool anthology coming out next month, FIFTY FIRST TIMES, with Jennifer L. Armentrout, Molly McAdams, Sophie Jordan and a whole bunch more of us. So, there's not much chance I'll stop writing. But...I will slow down a little. Life got a little crazy in the last half of last year, so I'm taking some time to enjoy my family and just breathe.

Thanks to all you readers who have been along for the ride. You're the reason I love my job. The notes and Tweets make all the insanity worth it. You are the absolute best! xxoxoxoox