Basically, we could have been the cast of a terrible teenybopper soap opera. But somehow, our differences just worked. We balanced each other out, and we loved each other like family.
“Zee! River!” Paisley squealed, running up to my sister and I and giving us hugs right before we walked into drama class.
“Hey, Paze,” I laughed. “I missed you.”
“And I guess I’m just chopped liver,” Grant teased as he joined the three of us.
“Stop it,” I scolded. “No, you’re not. You’re one of my best friends and I love you to pieces.”
We walked into the drama room, and I had to look back at the number outside the door to make sure I was in the right place. It looked so different from last year. Where there used to be pictures of Renaissance England and ancient Greek theater and Shakespeare and Oedipus quotes, now there were posters of Broadway and off-Broadway shows and pictures of the New York City skyline. And, as I took my seat, I saw an actual Broadway street sign hanging over the door.
“So, word has spread through the grapevine that the new drama teacher is drop-dead gorgeous,” Paisley giggled as she took a seat next to me. “Can’t wait to see for myself.”
“What happened to Mrs. Pouncey?” River asked before I could.
“She had a heart attack over the summer,” Grant told us. “She didn’t die, but she ended up retiring early. The stress of teaching is just too much for her, I guess.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to deal with teenagers all day, every day,” I chuckled. “I wonder what the new teacher will be like.”
“Apparently he just graduated from Flagler and he’s really fun, from what Bailey told me,” Paisley told us. “And he’s trying to get the rights to the high school version of Rent for the spring play. I’m just saying, it’s on, Zee. I know we’re going to be battling it out for Mimi.”
My heart leapt into my throat and my stomach twisted into a knot.
Just graduated from Flagler? Getting the rights to Rent?
No. It couldn’t be. There was no possible way that…Elijah could walk into the classroom right now.
Except that he just had.
I wanted to crawl under my desk and have a hole open up in the floor and swallow me. This was not how I’d wanted him to find out the truth about my age. I was supposed to call him and buy him a cup of coffee. I was supposed to be able to profusely apologize to him for not telling him right away. He wasn’t supposed to see me sitting in a classroom in front of him.
Elijah looked up from his attendance book, and our eyes immediately locked.
“Oh. My. God,” he said, loud enough for the entire class to hear.
KEEP READING THE BEGINNING OF ZOE’S STORY HERE.
OR GET THE BOX SET OF HER WHOLE TRILOGY HERE.
Playlist
When I was in middle and high school – in the late ‘90s and early-to-mid 2000s – I was very active in my church’s youth group and I listened to a lot of Christian rock music. So, when I started to conceptualize this story, in an effort to sort of bring myself back to being that kid again, I went back and pulled out all of my old Christian rock CDs. Yep, with the exception of a couple of CDs that I gave away to kids at church because I outgrew them, I still have them all.
So, a lot of the songs on this playlist are by Christian rock groups, and they’re songs I used to listen to all the time when I was growing up. Not all of them are ones that I used for chapter titles or ones that appear in the book. I did throw a handful of songs on this playlist that I just listened to a lot while I was writing this because they reminded me of the young girl who used to spend all of her time with her church youth group.
But don’t worry. Not all of them are the “all Jesus, all the time” kind of songs. In fact, most aren’t. I did include some songs like that, but my favorite Christian artists have always been the ones that weren’t as in-your-face about the message of their songs. (Can you tell I had – and still have – tons of love for Jars of Clay?) And for the most part, those songs were the ones I felt had a place in this story, because at its heart, this is a story about starting to think for yourself and stopping the blind obedience, and about how your faith can still be important to you even if your beliefs don’t exactly align with the church’s.
Listen on Spotify!
“Like a Child” by Jars of Clay
“Yours to Hold” by Skillet
“Jesus Freak” by dc Talk
“She’s So High” by Tal Bachman
“Can’t Erase It” by Jars of Clay
“Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode
“Disappear” by Jars of Clay
“Pull Me Out” by Bebo Norman
“Acoustic #3” by Goo Goo Dolls
“Shifting Sand” by Caedmon’s Call
“New Math” by Jars of Clay
“Kiss From a Rose” by Seal
“Fade to Grey” by Jars of Clay
“Dare You to Move” by Switchfoot
“Show You Love” by Jars of Clay
“Love Liberty Disco” by Newsboys
“Art in Me” by Jars of Clay
“When the Rain Comes” by Third Day
“Headstrong” by Jars of Clay (Note: This song was featured on a now-out-of-print compilation album called Roaring Lambs that is NOT on Spotify. Click here to listen to it on YouTube!)
“If God Made You” by Five for Fighting
“When the Mountains Fall” by Mark Schultz
“Love Only Knows” by Josh Groban
“Collide” by Jars of Clay
“Pompeii” by Bastille
“Only Hope” by Switchfoot
“A Page Is Turned” by Bebo Norman
“Luv Is a Verb” by dc Talk
“Tenderness on the Block” by Shawn Colvin
“Whispers in the Dark” by Skillet
“I’ll Fight” by Daughtry
“Truce” by Jars of Clay
“Slide” by Goo Goo Dolls
“He” by Jars of Clay
“What Have We Become?” by dc Talk
“Open Wounds” by Skillet
“The Last Night” by Skillet
“Don’t Ask Me No Questions” by Lynard Skynard
“Stars (The Shack Version)” by Skillet
“Come Together” by Third Day
“Cry” by Mandy Moore
“Ask Me” by Amy Grant
“Shine, Jesus, Shine” by Don Marsh
“MMMBop” by Hanson
“Love Song” by Third Day
“Flood” by Jars of Clay
“Nothing But the Blood” by Andy Cherry
“Dive” by Steven Curtis Chapman
“Live Out Loud” by Steven Curtis Chapman
“There You Go” by Caedmon’s Call
“In the Light” by dc Talk
“Unforgetful You” by Jars of Clay
“I’m Alright” by Jars of Clay
“I Am the Way” by Mark Schultz
“Back in His Arms Again” by Mark Schultz
“I Have Been There” by Mark Schultz
“I’ve Always Loved You” by Third Day
“Don’t Say Goodbye” by Third Day
“Sky Falls Down” by Third Day
“Still Listening” by Third Day
“Woo-Hoo” by Newsboys
“Big House” by Audio Adrenaline
Author’s Note
So…that happened.
Holy crap, did this story take me by surprise! And you know what that means, don’t you? As is par for the course lately, I’ve got a TON to say about this book, so grab your favorite drink and snack and make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright and locked positions. Ready for takeoff? Here we go.
Toward the end of last year, I ended up seeing the end of a close friendship that I now realize was toxic. Funny how hindsight works sometimes, isn’t it? You don’t realize that kind of thing until it’s too late and the damage has already been done.
Let’s
just say that for me, when things like that happen, it throws me for a loop. Being on the autistic spectrum, I don’t handle change well. So, I did what I always do in those situations and I retreated back into my shell. I only really kept talking to a few people because I just couldn’t handle the thought of peopling when I was trying to wrap my mind around what had gone down. I stopped writing my work in progress, the next book in the Game of Love series, because I couldn’t concentrate and nothing was coming out right. Basically, I let myself wallow.
After a couple of weeks, several different friends told me that I just needed to put words on paper (or screen) again. They told me that it didn’t matter if I was working on the book I was supposed to be working on or not. Writing has always been my outlet, so they just told me to write. Write essays. Write long, angry rants. Just WRITE. They told me to get myself back to being the girl who writes long, epic, 100k+ books without batting an eye. And when I was ready, see if I could get back into storytelling.
So I did. I wrote a bunch of short stories and journal entries that are now sitting on my computer and will probably never see the light of day. Whenever I got mad all over again at an aspect of what happened between me and this person – and believe me, there was a LOT that went down – I wrote it out. A lot of these stories and entries were long and angry and rambley and made absolutely no sense to anyone but me. But I got them out, and that was the important part.
But poetry and prose and essays have never been my forte. I’ve always worked through my pain by writing stories that have a hint of truth buried in all the fiction. So I tried to go back to writing the book I’d been working on, and it just didn’t come out right. The person that I’d cut ties with used to be such a huge cheerleader for me and was so invested in all of my stories, so when the ties were cut, it felt like I’d lost my mojo. Like when this person and I went our separate ways, they’d taken my ability to tell stories and connect with my characters with them.
Enter my friends, again. They ALL metaphorically slapped me upside the head and said, “No, Carmen! These are YOUR characters and YOUR stories and this person only has the power to take them away from you if you let it happen. So don’t let it happen! Take it back. Take these worlds and stories that you’ve invested so much time and effort and energy into back and prove to yourself and to this person that you can do this author thing without them. If you can’t connect with Braden and Gabrielle right now, set their story aside for a little while and write something else. You just need to find your love for writing again, and then you can get back to your publishing plan.”
So, I set Under My Skin to the side and tried writing other things. I tried writing a novella that I’d always planned for a couple of characters in this series…and it didn’t work. I couldn’t connect to those characters and it just felt weak and awful. I still have plans for that novella, but I think I need to approach it differently before I give it another go. Then I tried writing an LGBTQ+ sci-fi novel that I got one prologue and half a random scene into before I realized I couldn’t handle the intense world-building I’d need to do for that story at that point in time.
And then this story hit me. Funny thing? It was a story that my former friend specifically asked for. This person fell completely in love with Maddie and Autumn while they were reading My Pride Is Sealed, and they loved Brendan and Darla too. They just said they couldn’t help wanting to know what the story was there because it was very evident even in Pride how much Brendan and Darla still loved each other, even after over a quarter of a century.
I’d been toying around with making Brendan and Darla’s story a newsletter serial, but writing serials has never worked well for me. Sometimes the words flow and I can write two or three chapters in one day, and sometimes writer’s block hits and I don’t write anything for a week. And because I also edit, if I’m coming up against an editing deadline, my writing takes a back burner until I can finish with my client’s book. Not exactly conducive to keeping to a set schedule of sending out chapters every week.
And then when I started plotting this story out, still trying to make it work as a serial, I realized that if I was going to do it justice – really do it justice – it needed WAY more than I could give it in a serial style. It needed to be an actual novel. So I reworked the plot to work as a novel instead of a serial, and everything just fell into place…sort of. Just like always happens when I try to plot things out, this story ended up hanging a left at the corner of What the Heck Just Happened and Why Do I Even Bother Plotting pretty much right from the get-go. Brendan and Darla took my meticulously crafted outline, tore it up into little shreds, and then set it on fire.
As is par for the course, what they ended up telling me was SO much better than what I originally came up with. It was so much more heartbreaking and it had so many more feels. It was so difficult to write for so many reasons, and I cried and struggled with a bunch of scenes as I wrote them. Writing that kind of physical abuse was tough, mostly because while the psychological aspect of what Darla went through is something that I’m intimately familiar with, the physical abuse in this book goes way further than anything I’ve ever experienced, and I really wanted to make sure I was doing it justice. I think I did. I hope I did.
But surprisingly, the hardest part of this story for me to write wasn’t the abuse or the fear. It was a sweet, curious, empathetic little boy named Nathan. I really wish I could say exactly why it was so hard to write him, but if this story is your introduction to the Sealed With a Kiss series, I don’t want to give you any spoilers. Suffice it to say, I know what happens to him, and the more I’ve gotten to know him via the flashbacks and memories of the people who love him in other books, and the more I wrote him as a little boy into this book, the more I wish I hadn’t taken his story in the direction I did. But I did take it in that direction, and as much as I want to change it, I can’t now. What’s done is done, and what happens to him shapes the stories of way too many characters, so I have to leave it the way it is. I do have plans to do him justice, though. I just can’t say what they are yet.
Another thing that was WAY harder than I thought it was going to be? Dating this darn book! You know, figuring out what kind of technology existed in 1997 and 2001, what movies and music were actually out at that time, and being careful not to use any slang or colloquialisms that were more modern. I went into this going, “Heck, I was alive back then. This’ll be easy.”
No. No, it wasn’t easy. Case in point: in the middle of this book, my alpha called me out on the use of the word “sheeple,” because while you CAN trace the first use of this word to a Popeye comic from the 1940s, it wasn’t a commonly used term until way more recently, and I literally didn’t even think of that until she pointed it out.
Also, things that we just take for granted now didn’t exist twenty years ago. The very first smartphone, the BlackBerry, wasn’t released until 2000, and at that time, only super rich people could afford them. Cellphones weren’t commonplace until around that time, either, so I had to make Darla and Brendan survive without cellphones and texting for the first half of the book.
And I kid you not, I wrote a reference to the never-ending debate about whether the Backstreet Boys or N’Sync were better into one of the scenes in the first half of the book…until I Googled and found out that N’Sync’s debut album didn’t release until 1998, a year after that part of the story takes place! That completely boggled my mind!
But in happy news…guess what? This book has birthed plot bunnies for two more stories! One of them is going to be another prequel novel, and I think I’m just going to make the other one a standalone that’s not connected to the series. Neither of them are going to happen for a while, but they are planned.
Alex and Naomi end up having a daughter who becomes connected to one of the St. Augustine crew (the St. Augustine character was always going to get a book, but I just didn’t know how they were going to find their happy ending…and now I do!). By the way, I know Naomi’s bisexuality k
ind of just seems thrown into this book, but trust me when I say that it IS important to her story, so I had to have her and Darla have a conversation about it. I was actually going to put her with Heather in the second part of the story, hence her having a crush on Heather, but she had other ideas.
Ethan has his own story too, which is going to be a standalone because his connection to Brendan and Darla is the only connection to this world, and that’s a little too weak for me to justify putting his story in this series. I’m super excited AND nervous about writing it because it’s a M/M story, but it’s going to be amazing.
One final thing: my beta readers loved Kate and Ash and asked me about a story for them, so for anyone else who might be wondering about that, here’s my answer. No, they will NOT be getting a story. Kate is based on a very dear friend of mine, and Ash is based on someone in her life. If she wants to write her own story, that’s her business, and I will happily let her use Ash to do it because she basically created the character for me based on the real person, but it’s not my story to tell. Suffice to say, in the Sealed With a Kiss world, Kate and Ash get to live happily ever after together. In real life, they’re still very close friends who had life happen to them and had to continue their journeys separately.
And now it’s time for my favorite part of the author’s note. The part where I get to give shout-outs to all the people who helped me through this process, without whom this book would never have seen the light of day.
Katey: My wonder alpha, my Canadian brain, my sister from another mister. Where do I even start? How you’re still here after my needy ass kept bugging you and venting to you and crying my eyes out to you over the past few months, I have no idea. But no joke, this book never would have happened if it weren’t for you. You believed in me when I’d lost faith in myself, you believed in this story even while it was a vague idea just rattling around in my brain, and you helped me make it something truly special, something I’m proud to put out into the world. And thank you for letting me write you into this story! Darla needed her blunt, sweet, and hilarious bestie as much as I do. You helped me prove to myself that I still CAN write amazing stories without a certain someone who shall remain nameless. I seriously have no words for how much your support and faith means to me. I said it in the dedication, but I’ll say it again here: the Father of Swoony Words, the one and only Brendan Carter, is all yours.
My Vows Are Sealed (Sealed With a Kiss) Page 46
