Short one this month.

Let me start by saying thank you to the wonderful people who agreed to be beta readers for my next release. I appreciate your generosity. I promise not to text or email asking if you’re done yet😅.

If you’ve been with me a while, you know this book has tested me. Five years to a draft I finally liked. A hero who refused to face his backstory until I made him. A deadline I missed back in June. I told you then I’d rather hand you something that keeps you up too late than something I rushed. It’s good to finally have a story I’m happy to share with you. My excitement couldn’t be higher.

Compromising Secrets Teaser

Silken Thorne is a fearless cybersecurity expert, running out of time to prove her father was murdered and not the criminal the world believes him to be. The answers are buried inside the Campbell family’s servers, the same family she’s publicly linked to his death.

Harrison Campbell, the formidable second son of a supplement empire, has made one thing crystal clear: if she ever touches their system, she’ll never touch a computer again.

Then a hacker hits his sister’s charity auction, and Harrison is the one asking Silken for help.

She knows exactly what’s hiding in those servers. He has no idea what she’s really looking for. As they cross into each other’s world, the last thing either of them needs is the attraction forcing them together.

As it’s October, the start of spooky season, I’ll be working hard to prepare this novel for publication. In the meantime, enjoy the colourful trees and falling leaves everywhere. I’m already seeing the giant monsters and jack-o’-lanterns grinning at me from porches and lawns during my sunset walks.

Before I sign off, tell me, what makes you choose your next romantic suspense? The blurb about the couple, the danger, or the cover?

Hit reply. I’m really looking forward to your answer.

Loved the teaser? Forward this to a friend who’d love it too. She can join my newsletter here.

That’s it from me.

Angela

P.S. Stay tuned for the cover reveal of Compromising Secrets. You’ll see it here first.

Until next time . . . . let there be . . .

Hello All,

It’s September, my favourite month. A year ago, I told you I had finished the first draft of my new book. After a week’s break, I got started on revisions. Honestly, I rewrote most of it. Now a year later, I’m happy to say I completed the manuscript on Sunday. I’m so proud of the final scenes. In the second-last chapter, I surprised myself with what might be an idea for a sequel.

Now the full manuscript is in my editor’s hands. From there, it’s my read-through from top to bottom, the proofread and onto beta readers.

If you are interested in being a beta reader, drop me a line and I’ll add you to the list.

I took Labour Day off. With nothing to do but give my brain a break, I couldn’t help but think of what’s next. Then it hit me. I have to market this thing.

The overwhelm came on. OMG! There’s so much I’ve forgotten since I published my last novel.

I put all that aside and celebrated my birthday. By celebrate, I mean I failed to plan anything because I was stressed about getting the book done.

Luckily the weather cooperated. It rained all day. I stayed in and read. I got into my first Karin Slaughter novel, a Will Trent thriller.

It’s Sunday again and I’m planning the upcoming week.

What’s next?

The cover design. I did my research into what’s trending in romantic suspense and mystery romance. There are some ornate designs out there and some minimal ones. Anyway, I reached out to the designer I worked with before and got the process started.

Most experts say the author’s preferences shouldn’t matter. The cover is about attracting readers, not the author who wrote the book. I agree, and I don’t. My take, I want to be proud of the cover too. All that to say, a cover reveal is coming soon.

Thank you for hanging in there with me.

Fall is here and only good things happen when the trees are blessing us with their gorgeous colours.

That’s it from me this month.

Stay tuned.

Until next time . . . . let there be . . .

P.S.: Hit reply and let me know if you’re in for beta reading my upcoming novel.

I owe you a small confession.

Hey All

My editor expected the completed third draft of the new novel by the end of May. It’s almost the end of June, and it isn’t done. There are still scenes in the final act to edit, and a couple I haven’t even written yet.

For a few days, the setback sat on me like a wet coat. The voice that knows it all took over.

You missed the deadline.
You’re behind.
How will you catch up?

Then, I reread one of the scenes I’d rushed, and I spotted why I was stuck. The suspense was working. The romance was working. But my guy, you know the one, Mr. Handsome Hero was dodging those raw emotions around his backstory. Dude wasn’t getting over that hurdle. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t shove him. My job then became digging deep to find out what he was being all macho about. What was he not addressing?

In the kind of book I write, one main character not arcing isn’t a small problem, it’s the whole problem.

In a Romance With Motive story, the danger, the love, and the self-acceptance are not separate threads I braid together at the end. They run on the same engine. What stands between my characters and both love and survival is that one moment in the mirror. The motive behind the threat and the motive behind the longing turn out to be the same motive that buried the pain in the first place. It has to work on all three dimensions.

As real people, we live our lives with the same duality. We earn every moment of pleasure. We suffer through the angst to get to the rainbow of passion on the other side.

When I rush, I lose that. I get a competent thriller and hot romance, but I also get a character who fails to earn his word count. Tidy. Forgettable. Not the book I promised you, and not the book I’d want to read.

So I’m giving the draft the surgical precision it needs. New target, another month to work out the kinks. Slower than I wanted, but honest. It’s the only way I know how to write these two people.

I’d rather hand you something that keeps you up too late because you have to know, than something I shipped on time and didn’t quite mean. That has been the entire journey since I started working on this novel again.

So, thank you for being the kind of reader who waits for the real thing.

More soon.

Ever missed a deadline?

Hit reply and tell me, were you better for it? Or did it put you even further off your mark? Drop me a line and share your setbacks and your wins.

That’s it from me this month.

P.S.: Full honesty, sometimes I listen to that voice for far too long. Sometimes it helps. Most times it doesn’t. What about you?

This month I have been deep in edits on the new book, the kind where I fix one scene, break another, and end up staring at the ceiling at three in the morning because a character refuses to behave. Thank you for being here while the book is still in that wild, secretive stage. You get the thoughts that never make it onto the back-cover copy.

The part I cannot shake is the research.

I spent months learning how cyberattacks actually happen, and I came away looking at my own life differently. My inbox. My phone. The café Wi-Fi I join without thinking. The lazy comfort of an old password that feels harmless because it is familiar.

What unsettled me most was this: the weak point is not always code. Sometimes it is history. Some breaches are not only data breaches. They are intimacy breaches. The person who knows your birthday, your first pet’s name, the street you grew up on, and the password you have never changed, is not always the one who builds the strongest lock. Sometimes they are the one who slips right through it.

Last week I changed the passcode on my phone. Nothing dramatic happened. No suspicious alert. No breach. I was standing in line for coffee, typing the same numbers I have used for years, and I had the unnerving thought that someone who knew me well enough could probably guess them. Not a stranger. Someone who had watched me unlock my phone. Someone who knew which dates mattered to me, and why. I changed it anyway, then kept thinking about it for days.

Because passwords are not only practical. They are revealing. Sometimes they are tiny confessions: a birthday, a name, a date we never fully got over, a fragment of ourselves tucked behind a lock screen and called security.

That is the part of this book that has its hands around my throat in the best possible way. My heroine walks straight into that kind of danger. She enters a world where trust is currency and half the bills are counterfeit. The man closest to her could be her safest ally, or the threat she did not see coming. And the digital trail she thinks she has buried? It is still warm.

Now I want your honest answer.

Would you rather have a partner who knows all your passwords and never looks, or one who has no access at all but checks your lock screen every time you leave the room?

And tell me this too. Is there someone in your life, past or present, who could probably still guess your password? You do not have to name them. Reply with yes or no, or tell me which question made you squirm. I read every reply, and hearing from you is my favourite part of sending these letters.

That’s it from me.

Angela

P.S. I changed my password to something no one would ever guess. It’s the name of a fictional character who keeps me up at night. I’ll never tell you which one. But she’s trouble.