Pack your bags, we’re going to Palm Springs! Book twelve of The Bidden Series will pick up a couple of weeks after the events in Contested Heart. The story will focus on Natalie & [have you read Contested Heart yet?] and doesn’t feature the other characters you know and love (the crews from Gallow Harlow and Fitson). For me personally, I really see this book as bridging the gap between the Bidden of yesterday and the Bidden of tomorrow.

If you have been following the series since Candidate Four came out in April 2014 you may know that the book was intended to be a standalone. Yet, in truth writer fashion I fell in love with my characters and decided to flesh the story out into a trilogy. Then I started writing prequel and sequel shorts, expanding the Bidden world even further. That lead to new characters and love stories in Fading Dusk connecting them to established characters.

Contested Heart was the first book to feature the POV of Quinn, a character who has been at Natalie’s side literally since the day we met her in Candidate Four. And Quinn is actually connected to characters in my other series, The Romance of Nick and Layla, which is something probably no one but me knows. I almost can’t believe it took me that long to focus on her story and her heart, but it helps prove the point that there is still so much life to be told in this story.

At this point, I see no end in sight for The Bidden Series. I first met Natalie and Quinn and James in early 2014 when I began writing Contested Heart, a distraction from wedding planning (we wed in May of 2014) and they’ve just kinda stuck. But I don’t want them to actually be stuck. I want them to grow and not just rehash the same problems over and over again. So much has happened in the five years since I started this series. I got married, changed employment, moved twice, bought our first house, adopted ALL of our wonderful fur babies. These characters have grown with me.

So what makes Palm Springs different? Well as you read in Contested Heart, Natalie made a choice about who she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, and this new story introduces us to a sampling of what that life is like. And we get to welcome a new character into the family! It’s Natalie 2.0. The New Natalie. She’s settling into her brand new house with the love of her life, and all of the unique challenges and privileges that come with it. I really hope you like the direction I’m taking things in. And will I be connecting in more characters between book worlds?

Um, probably.