Mitchell and Cooper

I’ll start this off with a confession. Most of you know I was writing Books Seven and Eight at the same time. When Laramie ended, I knew I was going to start Say Goodbye to Sparkeland. I had teased it in Chapter 18 with a red M-7. Readers knew a Mitch story was coming.

Read the beginning of Laramie, Chapter 18, by clicking here.

But by the book’s conclusion, Corey had developed SO MUCH, I was all into writing about him and Aiden too. So, the two books were being written at the same time, even if in different time frames. Book Seven was still in “2023,” And Book Eight followed Corey’s high school graduation.

But with two books happening together, I realized there would be a distinct difference. With Mitch’s black book as the format for chapters, I knew it would be a lot of sex. That didn’t interest me for the college boys. Sure, A Bed, A Desk and My Unfortunate Soulmate didn’t shy away from sexual topics, but a lot of it was dialogue and youthful exploration. Mitch’s book is a bit more hardcore. My confession is the black book was a “cheat.” There is no requirement from this type of platform on the amount of sex that must be included, but the reader has some level of expectation. Mitch’s book made it easy to get through his background and have some steamier scenes. Still, the main purpose was to build his backstory on his way to Cooper and the story that took place in Coffee at 9.

With this chapter, we have caught up. Mitch has mentioned Cooper in his sessions with Logan, but now Cooper (whom we all know) is in the picture. We knew what was going to happen. Now everything unravels for Mitchell, and we see where he goes from there.

Click here to read Say Goodbye to Sparkleland, Chapter 19.

What is challenging for me with this chapter is going back to reference material I wrote two years ago. And no, I don’t have it all memorized. To be honest, when I do go back to reference, I will get caught up in what I’ve written in the past and relive why I loved those characters those many months ago. It’s good for me to go back now and then. But I did paint myself into a corner when I keep adding on to the stories that have been previously told. It’s a curse of consistency at this point. But the interwoven stories are what brought me here — and brought us together.

Looking forward, I have a lot to get excited about. Yes, there is still pain, but an abundance of character development is on the horizon for Mitchell. We’ve seen the briefest of snippets in Books Six and Eight: Mitchell rejoining coffee at 9, Laramie’s birthday card, the mysterious LB, etc. I’m excited to bring it to you in the weeks ahead.