June Happenings
Summer, a book launch, new editions, and my recommendations
As summer and my next book launch approach, I wanted to share the story behind my next release, No Home Without You: A Post-Apocalyptic Romance. I’ve borrowed the piece that starts the Acknowledgements in the upcoming book.
No Home Without You: A Post-Apocalyptic Romance has a lot to say about home and where we choose to live, which made me reflect on what home means to me. I need my husband, my books, and my cat. I love that the adult kids live nearby and come home once a week for dinner and a visit. Home is the place where I can be myself, unlike the persona I wear in so many other places. At home, I now feel safe, something I couldn’t always say.
Throughout my life, I have lived in almost thirty places, which is more than triple my husband’s number. I don’t remember my first home, but when I was two, we moved from Utah to Canada. The first summer, we lived in a tent in an orchard because there was nowhere available to rent. My first memories are from that time, with the sunlight filtering through the green canvas walls. Each of the next two rentals was temporary, one while my parents searched for land to buy, and another while they built a log house.
My parents found property in the mountains of Cherryville, BC, where they cleared land, skidding trees to the building site, first with my mom’s navy-blue VW bug, then later with the neighbor’s borrowed draft horse. With help from my visiting grandfather and uncles, they built a house from the ground up. We moved into this unfinished cabin in the summer of 1975, and my dad remained there until late 2022. My parents split up in 1980, and my mom, sister, and I moved into two more short-term, temporary places before 1982.
The next place I considered home was the “teachrage”, a house constructed on the school grounds of the elementary school where my mom worked and we attended. We lived there for four years. My favorite part wasn’t the house, but the easy access to the school playground, the hill behind it, and, in the winter, the outdoor ice rink where my sister, my friends, and I skated most afternoons until our feet were numb.
When I was fifteen, my mom and her long-term boyfriend bought a place together, and we moved in just as I entered ninth grade. It was the first time I’d gotten to choose paint colors and decorate my bedroom to make my space reflect my personality. I lived there four years as well, before I moved to university, living between four and twelve months in a series of dorm rooms for my first three years. From there, I moved to other on-campus housing for several semesters. These five years felt the most nomadic, and nothing seemed permanent.
After leaving university, I lived in each of the next places for about a year, but never considered them home, one because of the revolving door of roommates, the next because it was in a friend’s basement and was a temporary refuge.
When I moved in with my fiancé, we lived in a high-rise apartment on the edge of downtown Vancouver. I wasn’t comfortable with neighbors on either side, above, and below. I didn’t like that I had never met them. I could have passed my next-door neighbors in the lobby or on the street, and I wouldn’t have recognized them. While the building was new, it was in a sketchy part of town, and I wasn’t comfortable walking nearby. The apartment never felt like home, just another place I lived where I still couldn’t get a cat.
Three years later, we bought a house in the suburbs, on a mountain, a little like my homes in Cherryville. The first weekend after moving in, I got my first kitten in many years. This was the first place I’d considered home since leaving for university, and we lived there for seven years. The next move took me closer to work, meant to eliminate my commute. Six months after we moved in, my then-husband moved out. While the house was polished and new and the kids loved the yard, I only stayed there for two lonely years, never fully settling in and seldom sleeping more than five hours a night. I look back and consider it the house of insomnia.
The next move brought me to my current house, a four-bedroom home on a quiet cul-de-sac, a ten-minute walk from the school where I teach. Rob and I have lived here for sixteen years. We’ve had time to paint, renovate, add a deck, replace furniture, and make everything our own. This is the first place I’ve lived in that truly feels like my home. Someday we’ll have to leave, since it is a lot of house with all three children having grown up and moved out. I don’t want that day to come, and until then, I’m comfortable in what feels like my forever home.
Fans of my Love and Survival series can pre-order the ebook or paperback of No Home Without You from Amazon. The paperback can also be ordered from my indie publisher, Black Rose Writing. The audiobook is complete and should also be available to pre-order soon. Publication Day is July 9th for all formats.
Indiepublisher/Black Rose Writing: (use preorder code: Preorder2026 for 15% off) Paperbacks
As a separate note, my ebooks are now all available in French, German, and Spanish! If you select “See all languages and editions” and change the language in the drop-down menu, you can order the language of your choice.
Example: Al borde de la vida (Amor y supervivencia nº 1) (Spanish Edition)
Writing Update:
I’ve just finished revising my first-ever romance set in Canada. This story takes snippets of my childhood and stitches them together into a second-chance romance set in the Okanagan, which I’ve renamed Sunshine Valley. This story, Cherry Blossoms and Pocketknives, has been sent to my editor and pitched to my publisher for 2028. Crossing my fingers, it’ll be accepted.
My newest WIP is a return to Apocalypse Day in Canada and parallels The Edge of Life, featuring a character referenced in Aftermath (Kory’s sister Alice Walker) and someone new. The Edge of Life left the characters at xTerra, my bunker city, about ten days after the asteroid strike. I’m excited to return to this world and dig into a story that continues after Mount Mazama (Crater Lake) erupts and triggers an early winter.
Reading Recommendations:
May’s favorites include two new Canadian romances, Fever Dream by Elsie Silver and Our Perfect Storm by Carley Fortune. I loved them both and couldn’t decide which to recommend, so I’m going with both.
Our Perfect Storm: Carley Fortune once again writes a terrific romance set in Canada, this time heading to Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island. This story takes best friends and soulmates, and shows them how and why they should be together. I enjoyed the setting as much as the characters. I’ve also been to Tofino and storm-watched from inside a cedar-beamed lodge, so I can relate to the setting in a way that added to the story.
I also loved Ryder by Jessica Peterson, another outstanding cowboy romance in her Lucky River Ranch series.
Indie Book Choice:
Michelle Wiberg knocks it out of the park with her debut apocalyptic romance. I was hooked from the beginning of this action-packed and full-of-heart story. Jessie, an art grad student and daughter of a well-known scientist and prepper, is at home when her clairvoyant grandmother has a vision of imminent doom.
Unable to wait for the rest of their group, they head for the family's hidden sanctuary in Colorado's Rocky Mountains, where they hope to weather the disturbance. Shortly after their departure, a massive global cyber attack triggers the collapse of modern civilization. With Jessie's father trapped in England, and his grad students caught making their own preparations, the two women become isolated by the worst snowfall in over a hundred years. They'll have to weather the long winter alone.
Nearby, Sean, a former Navy vet with PTSD, discovers Jessie on a spring day after another tragedy has struck. He offers to stay with her until family friends or her father return. Sean and Jessie discover many commonalities and develop mutual respect as they learn to trust one another. As their relationship deepens, they lean into the connection and support they receive from one another. Perfect for fans of Claire Kent, Anna Calloway, and E.S. Luck, I devoured this page-turner in less than a day and can't wait for the next book in the series.
Where to Find Me:
June 6th, 2026. BC Author Book Fair in Chilliwack, BC.
2. New Westminster Market Dates:
a. July 18th
b. September 12th
c. September 26th.
