The Series is Finished—Now What?

Setting Two Hearts Free, the last story in my Revolutionary War series, was released in the fall of 2020, preceded by A Heart For Freedom in 2018 and A Heart Set Free in 2016. I began writing the series in the 1980s but put it aside for many years.

 

 

 

 

In the midst of that, I had the fun opportunity of writing a novella in

collaboration with three other Smitten authors. My story is The Year Without Summer in The Highlanders: A Smitten Historical Romance Collection which was released in 2019.

 

Authors can get very attached to their characters when they spend years writing a series. But then it’s time to move on to other stories and other characters, and in my case a different era. I am currently writing a story about the Irish potato famine which took place in the mid-1800s. It was during the potato famine that some of my ancestors emigrated from Ulster Ireland.

A time of starvation and emigration

There were successive potato crop failures but the famine of 1845-1852 was the worst. It is estimated that one million people died of starvation and disease and another million people emigrated. Many of those emigrating to Canada and other countries perished on the ships. Many, like one of my characters, emigrated to the United States.

This story has a twist that connects it to the novella and the series. I’m about three-quarters of the way through it so stay tuned.