The Hazards is Here!

Please forgive me for veering off topic today, but I'm thrilled to announce that my debut novel, The Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken, is officially available on Amazon!

Fear not. I promise that I am not going to turn this space into a blog about writing and book sales. Though I will probably note when it trickles into other sales outlets. And today, I can't resist sharing the text from my book's back cover:

Zoë Clark thinks her world will implode when her fiancé dumps her on the eve of their splashy wedding. After nearly a decade with her college sweetheart, Zoë feels like a teenager about to be eaten alive by the New York dating scene. And her problems don’t end there. Zoë works a less-than-ideal job, managing other people’s careers while her own ambitions wither.

Enter Oscar Thornton. He’s handsome, charming, attentive and rich - the perfect boyfriend. But does he harbor a dark secret? Or will Zoë torpedo her newfound happiness by indulging a far fetched suspicion?

The Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken tells the story of a young woman who sets out to find a man to solve her problems. Instead she finds herself facing her own shortcomings, testing her oldest friendships and realizing that she has the power to make herself happy.

Packed with snappy dialogue and playful wit, The Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken will strike a chord with any woman who’s ever allowed herself to think, My life would be perfect, if I could just meet the right guy.

I'm incredibly excited to see my novel in print. It's been a long road. I wrote the first draft of The Hazards several years ago, after writing a suspense novel that garnered rejections in the vein of "too complicated for a debut novel," and "I like this, but the world isn't ready for a female Jason Bourne." So I reluctantly put that novel away, and started work on a more mainstream women's fiction manuscript, which became, through several rounds of edits, the book that launched this week.

I shopped it, collected rejection letters, re-wrote extensively. Two days before my son was born, I thought I had sold The Hazards. Then life got in the way. Distracted by the Grape's health and my own, I couldn't get the necessary revisions done. Honestly, I slept so little in those months that I couldn't remember what I'd had for breakfast most days, let alone what changes I had inflicted on my book.

The deal slipped through my fingers. I put the manuscript away for a year, got healthy, learned to sleep again. One day I decided I had put so much work into The Hazards that I was going to kick myself if I let its moment pass. So I undid the crazy revisions I'd done from my sick bed, re-wrote several scenes, and confiscated the characters' flip phones in order to issue them iPhones. Here it is at last - and just a few weeks shy of the Grape's second birthday. I hope, if you decide to read The Hazards, that you'll take a moment to stop back and tell me what you think.