This week was my ninth wedding anniversary and I forgot it. When my husband pulled me onto his lap this morning and told me, I stared at him blankly. I asked him if he was sure. And I realized, somewhere between his chuckle and his kiss, that it was the most unromantic response ever.

But that's what release weeks are like. Love Chloe released this Monday, and everything in my life sort of stopped -- a pause in time that only I was aware of, the rest of the world ticking on, unaware of my frantic obsession at the birth of my latest baby.

Love Chloe is my twelfth novel. That seems crazy. Life was so much easier back in 2012, when I pressed 'publish' on Blindfolded Innocence and then squealed with joy when I had three sales. I want to go back to that time. I tell new authors all the time to not obsess over sales and then do exactly that

CHAPTER 1 - SOLE

The last few years have brought a lot of firsts for me. First time looking into a camera and saying a line. First time kissing a man I hated. First time falling in love with a man I hated. First time leaving my hometown. First time at Cannes. First time house-hunting. First time . . . well. If I list them all here you’ll fall asleep from the boredom. I’ll skip to today. First time I kill my husband. 

I'm at that place in writing that I always forget about. The day I finish. It's always easy to remember the struggles. The frustration. The days where I look at my husband and can't remember his name because I'm on my third day of no sleep. But today is my finish line. The easy, write three chapters and be done with this baby, final steps. I want to remember this, to cherish it. A reminder that things might seem bleak at times, but they are always balanced out by good days. In life as much as in writing. Don't forget to celebrate those good days. 

Yesterday marked the end of a one-year journey: my time at Cosmopolitan.com. I had been given a fun task, to write, one episode at a time, three episodes per week, the story of a NYC girl and her hunt for love. 

I often forget, when a book is written and sitting on my shelf, all of the heartache and frustration that went into writing it. Take Sex Love Repeat. I was a writer possessed, churning out a stack of pages each day until BAM. I had backed myself into a corner, hopelessly in love with two different heroes with no idea what to do. I struggled for three weeks, writing, then deleting scenes.

This morning I'm writing the last three episodes of the Bedroom Blog. It's been a long and fun journey, I have really enjoyed this process and connecting with new readers through Cosmopolitan. It's been odd, writing a story over the course of a year, three chapters at a time. I've never written a story in that fashion, especially one where I couldn't change scenes once they had been written (and published). It's been a really interesting and creative experience. 

Today marks my eleventh release day. That's a crazy thought, that I have been through this whirlwind that many times in just three and a half years. 

Every one of my book babies are different, and each of their releases brings forth a different set of expectations and emotions.