Release date is August 26, 2025.
According to the copyright page on Jack and Charlotte’s latest book, it’s taken eight years to complete. I’m not sure that’s entirely true, because books get their copyright when I first begin a file for them, which might be during the writing of several books that ultimately precede them. It’s been a long time in coming, regardless. Just a few things that happened between the start and finish…
1) we lost Indy to cancer. That was absolutely devastating, and my sense of humor seemed to go with him. So did Jack and Charlotte’s, because as I go, so go my characters. If I’m hungry, so are they. If I’m exhausted, they are too. In this case, they were depressed. To get their equilibrium back, I had to find mine.
2) Covid happened! As a result, Brad worked from home full-time for a couple of years, and part-time until recently. That multiplied the distractions by a lot, and I found it impossible to write. At all!
3) Pre-covid, Em was undergoing testing to discover what was causing the symptoms that made her life increasingly difficult. Covid put a stop to that! At last, we finally have the right doctors and the diagnoses needed to offer treatment to mitigate. I posted about this previously, with her permission, so will do so again; Ehler’s Danlos (connective tissue disorder), POTS (autonomic nervous system disorder), stage 3-4 endometriosis, fibromyalgia, and narcolepsy. She’s doing a lot better than she was, and we’re very thankful for that.
4) Star, who was a relatively well behaved cat for most of her many years, began slapping Brad in the face every night. All night long. It was very strange behavior, and there was no stopping her. She was driven. Which drove Brad more than a little crazy! I felt concern, because pets have been known to fixate on locations where cancer is present. It wouldn’t be the first time Brad was diagnosed with a brain tumor that had to be removed, so I pushed for him to get an MRI. It was about time for a recheck, anyway, and… Brad did, indeed, have another tumor exactly where Star was whacking him. I don’t feel he was nearly as grateful to her early warning as he ought to be, but I certainly thanked her. The tumor was small enough to use the Gamma Knife procedure, which is far less invasive than a craniotomy or transphenoidal, both of which he underwent previously. So really, that girl spared us all a lot of future grief with her early detection.
5) Hurricane Beryl happened! It didn’t hit us hard at all, but we lost power anyway. In the blistering heat and humidity of summer in Houston. We stuck it out for a week, but every day it was hotter inside the house. There was no cooling off. One of my tires had a slow leak, which we discovered after losing all power. Brad’s truck had a hose dangling underneath, which we discovered right after. There was no leaving! But we were able to find a Discount Tire with electricity, so they fixed the tire and didn’t even charge us. We will always go to them for tires, from now on! Friends offered us the use of their RV, and it was such a relief to cool off.
6) I became very sick, and was ultimately diagnosed with pan colitis. Gastroenterology offered a bunch of suggestions that made me soooo much worse. After doing my own research I went on a carnivore diet. It completely reversed the condition. Removing vegetables also put an end to the kidney stones I was plagued with for years! I’m very sensitive to oxalates, apparently.
7)Pandy died with as little warning as one can expect after a multi-years’ long diagnosis of kidney disease. It took her so abruptly it’s still a shock. She was an incredibly special cat, and Em’s best friend since she was five.
8) Star experienced intermittent vomiting and refusal to eat over the course of several years, which grew more frequent. After a trip to the ER, in which they floated the dreaded word “cancer”, our vet had a look at the extensive test results and rolled his eyes. It wasn’t cancer. It was IBD! Ever since starting the daily budesonide, she’s doing wonderful. Her fur is smooth and sleek instead of rough, she clearly feels well, she eats well, and no more vomiting!
This is a positive, so it doesn’t get a number. Last October, shortly before losing Pandy, I encouraged Em to pick out a kitten. Maybe some part of me knew Pandy couldn’t last forever. I certainly had concern over what that eventual loss would do to her. So I practically brute forced her to go visit a rescue. We came home with Martin, a black longish-haired kitten born in a pipe yard. As my sister noted, he looks like a poorly designed Halloween decoration. He really will, as soon as the autumn decorations are in place! He’s so incredibly funny and entertaining, I was able to get back to writing “Gone in a Flash”. If not for Martin, I’m not sure when or if I ever would’ve been able to finish it. It’s as though he healed something in me that was destroyed when Indy died.
9) At 2:30 in the morning, as I was finishing the writing of “Gone in a Flash”, Em came to my office and asked me to check on her mouse, Bubbles. He wasn’t moving, even though she gave him a pumpkin seed. Oh, no, I thought with dread. I went to her room and watched for a couple of minutes, but the little guy didn’t move a single hair as he lay on the floor of the cage in an awkward position. I felt of his cold, stiff, lifeless little body and pronounced him deceased. It was very sad. I moved Mister Bubbles and his ponderous cage down the hall, comforted Em some more, and by then I was too exhausted to finish writing. I went to bed.
The next morning, I went upstairs, intending to wrap Bubbles in a shroud in preparation for burial in the flowerbed. Martin sat by the cage, looking smug. Inside, there was no sign of Bubbles! I was horrified. Surely this cat, as ornery as he is, didn’t get the door open, get Bubbs, dispose of him, then fasten it back in place! But Bubbles was gone! I opened the door and looked under and behind every item in the cage, and much to my shock, Bubbles was underneath the igloo. He blinked back at me sleepily. So… either he needs to be renamed Lazarus, or he successfully faked his own death. He’s doing absolutely great now, and shows no signs of illness or infirmity. I can tell you this, that mouse may have to partially decompose before we ever risk burying him! After waking Emily to give her the good news, at last… I finished “Gone in a Flash”!
11) Yes, there’s more! There’s lots I’ve forgotten, but this is the last hurdle. I opened the program I’ve used for years to create the covers for my books… and it refused to fully load. I restarted the windows side of my laptop, restarted the whole machine, tried, tried, and tried again. Evidently an update to windows, or the partition used to run a virtual machine with windows on my Mac, made it incompatible with my program. OH MY WORD! I can not tell you how devastating that was! I was at my wits end, because there is no software out there that offers the ease of function that CraftArtist did, and I didn’t have the time or inclination to learn something new, when I couldn’t be sure it would allow me to do what I needed to. So after ranting and raving, I told GROK what I used previously, and what I needed in a replacement, and the recommendation was two programs by Serif, the maker of CraftArtist. The two together replicate the functions of CraftArtist, and unlike it, they’re fully supported. For now! But at least for now, they are, and I was able to create the covers for paperback and hardback. GROK earned my appreciation by detailing exactly how to set the custom sizes I needed to create the covers, because it has to be specific. It can’t be kind of the right size. It has to be exact.
I hope everyone enjoys reading it when it comes out August 26th! It’s currently available for preorder on Amazon in kindle, paperback, and hardback versions. Soon it will be available at Barnes & Noble for Nook. After that… I’ll get back to writing! I have several ideas simmering right now, but most likely the next one will be Fox’s short story, “113 Psycho Path”.