When I started thinking about The Sports Series, I knew the sports I wanted to write about, but not the characters or plots yet.
Always More was easy because it was my favorite sport, and I knew I wanted it to end at the 2020 Olympics, where Team USA would win their first gold medal. (Which actually happened later!)
With The Unexpected Dream, I had a chance to do something similar since softball was back in the Games for 2020. (They lost to Japan in the final instead of winning, so I got 1 out of 2 of my predictions right). Other than that though, plot-wise and character-wise, I still had nothing.
Back then, I’d just recently finished re-reading Popcorn Love by KL Hughes, and I listened to the book on Audible because I listen to books more than read them these days. In that book, there’s a little boy, and I thought the narrator, Kira Riley, did such a good job not making him sound like an annoying toddler, like so many other books I’d listened to where sometimes, it’s so annoying, I have a hard time listening to the book. I got the idea that I wanted to make a non-annoying toddler in a book of my own because I hadn’t written a book with a parent in it (only in What Happened Afters after the main stories are wrapped up).
I decided that I wanted to write about a character who had been on her way to the Olympics for softball, gotten pregnant, and after having her baby, had some issues at home she’d needed to re-evaluate. She’d given up on the dream she had and devoted her life to her daughter. Making a new softball league would give her a new chance to at least play the sport she loved for a few more years, and she meets Skylar there, who has her own baggage related to the sport and her chances of making the Olympic team.
Together, they achieve the unexpected dream: the family they both wanted and never thought they could have, and yes, that gold medal, too, because women CAN have it all.
The Unexpected Dream
Sports Series Book #3
Genre: Lesbian Romance
Release Date: September 3rd, 2020
Formats: Kindle, Paperback
Length: 65,300 words
