Well, colour me stoked. The Guy from the Wedding, the fifth addition to the Somerville Downs collection, is finally out of its drafting stage and in the hands of my beta readers. I won’t hear back for at least another month (and at most two months), but there’s plenty of work to do to get this book ready for launch. Some of which has already begun.

The Somerville Downs collection

Sharp-eyed visitors to my website might have noticed that the Somerville Downs and Somerville Stories titles have been united. It seemed silly to have two separate sets of books taking place in the same universe around the same time period, so they’re now combined into a single Somerville Downs collection.

I hope I’m not confusing anyone by referring to it as a “collection”. Even though the term “series” is used more commonly in fiction, it feels a little misleading to call it that when I can help it. The Somerville books don’t happen one after the other. They all take place simultaneously in this fictional municipality over a single summer.

In computing terms, that makes them a “parallel” rather than a “series” 😆

What about the other books?

In just a few months, we’ll be over halfway what I planned for Somerville. The final three books are shorter, with much of the planning, research and character work already done, so I anticipate they’ll come out a lot quicker though I’m scared to jinx it by saying when!

During and after beta

While my kind-hearted readers pore over my almost 70-thousand words (or so), I’ll be getting busy with the book cover and blurb. The Guy from the Wedding is the longest book in the Somerville Downs collection, so once beta feedback arrives, I expect it’ll take another six weeks or so to handle final revisions and editing.

In my experience, putting out a book can happen really quickly as well as painfully slowly. This book just happened to be the latter, as I’d underestimated the amount of research and thinking (and soul searching) needed to get the characters and story where they needed to be.

Not to mention it began as a web serial on my blog with far less thought put into what Katrina and Liam needed to overcome in order to find happiness together!

I’m so excited to share The Guy from the Wedding with you this year. I’m loving what it’s become, and really hope you’ll love it too! 💙