If you’ve read MIDNIGHT TRADITION or my blog about it (here), you know how Jessica and Val came to me. Quick summary: I introduced them in that book as Maddox’s cheating ex-girlfriend and as a woman at the party who was interested in Avery briefly.
Midnight Tradition was supposed to be the 3rd and final book in what would become the Celebrities Series, but for some reason, I kept going back to Jessica’s story. I felt like she had a truth to tell that we didn’t get to hear in Midnight. I remember telling my wife that I wanted to challenge myself to write a story where I could redeem a character, and I wanted to do that for Jessica.
In Path Forward, it was Jessica’s path to that redemption that led her, in a way, to finding love. She’s lost her girlfriend. She’s lost the friends they shared. And she’s at a crossroads. She knows she hurt Maddox, even though she had her reasons, and we finally get to hear her part of the story as she decides to embark on a quest to apologize to anyone she might have hurt because of her actions, including a woman she might have been leading on and all the friends she and Maddox shared.
Val is minding her own business at a pack-and-ship store when Jessica walks in, and she can’t quite believe that Jessica would be remotely interested in her. I liked playing with the whole opposites attract, rich girl/poor girl thing here, and it felt like Jessica needed someone like Val in her life, and Val needed someone like Jessica in hers.
Val was always top of mind for this story. I wrote her as a random tertiary character in Midnight, but when I started figuring out this book, it just fit for me that not only are they right together, they were also at the same party one night and had no idea. That felt like fate to me.
Path Forward
Celebrities Series Book #4
Genre: Contemporary Sapphic Romance
Release Date: January 27th, 2021
Formats: Kindle, Audible, Paperback
Length: 61,200 words
Listening Length: 6 hours and 08 minutes
