I keep saying it like I’m still getting used to it. Beyond Tarnish is out, Katherine Carson is back, and I’ve spent the last couple of weeks finding out what it actually feels like when a book you’ve worked on finally meets people.

You’d think by book three I’d have this figured out. I’m starting to think that’s not how it works.

The launch was a come-and-go reception at a local coffee shop here in Shelbyville. I set up my table, arranged the books, and quietly hoped the foot traffic would do some of the work for me. It didn’t. That part I had to let go of pretty quickly. But here’s what I didn’t expect — someone found me through a Facebook ad, walked in, and bought four complete sets of books. Four. For the whole series. I stood there for a second not quite knowing what to say. That one moment felt like a message: keep going.

I sold forty-five copies of Beyond Tarnish that day, had conversations that reminded me why I write these characters, and left feeling like something real had happened — even if it looked quieter from the outside than I’d imagined.

Two days later I ran into a friend who’d picked up a copy at the launch. She clapped her hands together and announced, “I finished your book — yay! I liked it. And it surprised me.” She said it with such genuine delight that I laughed out loud. She’d read it in two days. That’s exactly what I aim for — a book short enough and sharp enough that if you want to finish it in a sitting or two, you can. Hearing that from her, said exactly like that, felt like the review that mattered most.

Then there was the book fair — exactly one week after launch day.

The Bluegrass Writers Coalition put it together, and we were set up in a covered pavilion with about twenty of my author friends, Rahab’s Rope providing the music, and the kind of easy conversation that only happens when you’re surrounded by people who understand this life. What we didn’t have was foot traffic. Because it rained. It rained in that steady, committed way that makes people choose their couch over pretty much anything else, including discovering a local author they might love.

I could have spent the day frustrated. I almost did, for a minute.

We’d had readings scheduled, and we decided to go ahead anyway — no customers, no problem. Good practice, if nothing else. I went first, reading an excerpt from Beyond Tarnish to the group. Then Jenna Gilliam stepped away from Rahab’s Rope and came up to interview me in front of everyone. She has this gift for making you feel like you’re just talking — like there’s no crowd, no pressure, just a conversation. Two other authors shared their work after that, and somewhere in the middle of all of it I forgot to be disappointed. The community that was already there under that pavilion, in the rain — that was the event.

My takeaway from that day: don’t be so focused on who didn’t show up that you miss the people who did.

Book three is in the world. That’s the thing I keep coming back to. Everything else is just the story of how it got here.

Thanks for reading! 📖

Drop a comment if you made it to the end. 🥰